Tactics of Mistake

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “And you, a safe trip to Earth,” said Cletus.

  Dow turned and went out. Several minutes later the door opened again and Wefer’s head appeared in the opening.

  “DeCastries gone?” Wefer asked. “He didn’t talk long at all then.”

  “We said what we had to say,” answered Cletus. “There wasn’t much point in his staying, once we’d done that.”

  17.

  Three days later, Mondar made his reappearance at Cletus’s bedside. “Well, Cletus,” he said, sitting down in the chair by the bed, “I’ve spent most of my time since I saw you last going into your situation with other members of our group who’ve had more experience with certain aspects of what you suggested than I have. All together we worked out a pattern of behavior that looks as if it might give the greatest possible encouragement to the miracle you’re after. The main question seemed to be whether it would be better for you to be ultimately acquainted with the physiology of your knees, and the process of tissue growth and regrowth, or whether it would be better for you to have as little knowledge of it as possible.”

  “What was the decision?” Cletus asked.

  “We decided it would be best if you knew as little as possible,” Mondar said. “The point is, the stimulus for what’s going to be essentially an abnormal body reaction has to come from a very primitive level of the organism—you being the organism.”

  “You don’t want me visualizing what’s going on then?”

  “Just the opposite,” answered Mondar. “You should remove your concern with the regrowth process as completely as possible from any symbolic area. Your determination to achieve regrowth must be channeled downward into the instinctive level. To achieve that channeling you’re going to need practice, and so we worked up a set of exercises that I’m going to teach you to do over the next two weeks. I’ll come here and work with you daily until you can do the exercises by yourself. Then I’ll observe until I think you’ve got complete control in the necessary areas. Then we’ll recommend the symbolic operation, in which the genetic pattern of your right knee will be transferred in the form of a few cells of tissue of flesh and bone to the area of the left knee, where we want regrowth to take place.”

  “Good,” said Cletus. “When do you want to start the exercises?”

  “Right now, if you like,” answered Mondar. “We start out by getting off the topic of your knees entirely and into some completely different area. Any suggestions for a topic?”

  “The best one in the universe,” Cletus answered. “I was intending to talk to you about it anyway. I’d like to borrow two million IMU’s.”

  Mondar gazed at him for a second, then smiled. “I’m afraid I don’t have that much with me,” he said. “After all, out here away from Earth two million International Monetary Units are rather more scarce than they are back on Earth. Are you very urgent about your need for them?”

  “Urgent and absolutely serious,” replied Cletus. “I’d like you to talk to your fellow Exotics here in Bakhalla—and anywhere else, if necessary. I’m not wrong, am I, in thinking your organization could lend me that kind of money if you thought it was worthwhile?”

  “Not wrong, no,” said Mondar, slowly. “But you have to admit it’s a rather unusual request from an essentially propertyless ex-colonel in the Alliance forces who’s now an emigrant to the Dorsai. What do you plan doing with a sum of money like that?”

  “Build an entirely new type of military unit,” Cletus answered. “New in organization, training, hardware and tactical abilities.”

  “Using,” said Mondar, “the Dorsai mercenaries, of course?”

  “That’s right,” answered Cletus. “I’m going to produce a fighting force at least five times as effective as any comparable military unit presently in existence. Such a force will be able to underbid not only the Alliance, but the Coalition, when it comes to supplying military force to an off-Earth colony such as yours. I can raise the pay of the men and officers in it and still market an effective force for less than even the Dorsai mercenaries were charging in the past—simply because we’ll need less men to do the same job.”

  “And you’re suggesting,” Mondar said, thoughtfully, “that such a mercenary force would soon pay back a two million loan?”

  “I don’t think there’s any doubt of it,” said Cletus.

  “Possibly not,” said Mondar, “provided these new mercenaries of yours will do what you say they’ll do. But how could anyone know that in advance? I’m afraid, Cletus, that our organization would need some kind of security before lending out such a very large amount of money.”

  “Security,” said Cletus, “is often unnecessary where the borrower’s reputation is good.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve borrowed two million IMU’s on occasions before this?” Mondar raised his eyebrows quizzically.

  “I was speaking of a military, not a financial, reputation,” Cletus said calmly. “Your Exotics have just had the best possible proof of the military reputation in question. A small group of Dorsai mercenaries, single-handedly, have succeeded in doing what a very large and much better equipped Alliance force wasn’t able to do—essentially destroy Neuland as a military power and win the local war for your colony. The conclusion to be drawn from that is that this colony of yours doesn’t need the Alliance forces. It can protect itself perfectly adequately with its Dorsai mercenaries, alone. Am I right?”

  “You certainly present a good argument,” said Mondar.

  “The security for the loan, therefore,” said Cletus, “is the best sort of security in the world. It’s the literal security of this colony, guaranteed by the Dorsai mercenaries until the loan is paid back.”

  “But what if… ah…” Mondar said, delicately, “you Dorsais should default on your bargain? I don’t mean to insult you, of course, but in matters like this all possibilities are going to have to be considered. If I don’t bring up the question, someone else will. What if, after we’d lent you the money and you’d retrained your troops, you refused either to pay or to continue guaranteeing the security of this colony?”

  “In that case,” said Cletus, spreading his hands on the sheet of the bed, “who else would hire us? Successful mercenaries, like traders in any other goods, build their business on the basis of satisfied customers. If we took your money and then welshed on our agreement, what other colony would be willing to take a chance on us?”

  Mondar nodded. “A very good point,” he said. He sat for a moment, his gaze abstracted, as if he communed with himself in some secret corner of his brain. Then his eyes came back to Cletus.

  “Very well,” he said, “I’ll convey your request for a loan to my fellow Exotics. That’s as much as I can do, you realize. It’ll take some little time for the matter to be considered, and I can’t promise you any great hopes of success. As I said, it’s a very large amount of IMU’s you’re asking to borrow, and there is, after all, no great reason why we should lend it.”

  “Oh, I think there is,” said Cletus easily. “If my estimate of you Exotics is correct, one of your eventual aims is to be completely independent of outside obligations—so that you can be free to work out your vision of the future without interference. The Alliance’s military aid has been helpful to you, but it’s also kept you under the Alliance’s thumb. If you can buy security from mercenary soldiers without obligation, you’ll have achieved a freedom that I think you all want very badly. A two million unit loan on good security is a small risk to take for the chance of gaming that freedom.”

  He looked significantly at Mondar. Mondar shook his head slightly; there was a touch of admiration in his face.

  “Cletus, Cletus,” said Mondar, “what a waste it is, your not being an Exotic!” He sighed, and sat back in the chair. “Well, I’ll pass your request for a loan along. And now, I think it’s time we got started with your exercises. Sit back and try to achieve that state of a floating sensation that you described to me. As you probably know, it’s called a state of regre
ssion. I’m also putting myself now into such a state. Now, if you’re ready, join me in concentration on that isolated pinpoint of life, that single sperm cell that was the first core and beginning of your consciousness. To that early and primitive consciousness, now, you must try to return.”

  Three weeks later, healing well and with both legs stiffened by a walking cast about each knee, Cletus was swinging along on wrist-crutches with Arvid in the Bakhalla in-town terminal. They were headed toward the airbus that would lift them to that same shuttleboat landing pad on which Cletus had first set down on Kultis a couple of months before—the airbus being made necessary by new construction on the road to the pad, now that guerrilla activity had been halted.

  As they passed the main lounge of the terminal, an Alliance officer stepped out in front of them. He was First Lieutenant Bill Athyer, and he was drunk—not drunk enough to stumble in his speech or his walk, but drunk enough to bar their way with an ugly light in his eye. Cletus halted. Arvid took half a step forward, opening his mouth, but Cletus stilled the young man with a hand on one massive arm.

  “Leaving for the Dorsai, are you, Colonel?” said Athyer, ignoring Arvid. “Now that everything’s nice and prettied up here, you’re on your way?”

  Cletus leaned on the crutches. Even bent over in this position, he had to look down to meet Athyer’s bloodshot eyes.

  “Thought so.” Athyer laughed. “Well, sir, I didn’t want to let you get away, sir, without thanking you. I might have gone up before a review board, if it hadn’t been for you, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “That’s all right, Lieutenant,” said Cletus.

  “Yes, isn’t it? Quite all right,” said Athyer. “And I’m safely tucked away in a library instead of facing a reprimand and maybe losing one turn at an advance in grade. No danger of my getting out in the field where I might foul up again—or, who knows, might even make up for not being quite as smart as you up at Etter’s Pass, sir.”

  “Lieutenant…“ Arvid began in a dangerous rumble.

  “No,” said Cletus, still leaning on the crutches, “let him talk.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. Thank you, sir… Damn you, Colonel”—Athyer’s voice broke suddenly, raw-throated—“did your precious reputation mean so much to you that you had to bury me alive? At least you could’ve let me take my lumps fair and square, without any show-off kindness from you! Don’t you know I’ll never get another chance in the field now? Don’t you know you’ve marked me for good? What am I supposed to do now, stuck in a library for the rest of my army life with nothing but books?”

  “Try reading them!” Cletus made no attempt to hold his voice down. It carried clearly to the crowd that by now was listening, and the scorn in it was, for once in his life, cruel and unsparing. “That way, you just might learn something about the handling of troops in combat… Come along, Arv.”

  He swung his crutches out to one side and went around Athyer. Arvid followed. Behind them, as the crowd closed in about them once more, they heard Athyer’s hoarse, pursuing shout:

  “I’ll read, all right!” it rang behind them. “And “I’ll keep reading until I’ve got the goods on you—Colonel!”

  18.

  Six months later, Cletus was not only successfully healed, but ready to begin upon the work he had anticipated, in emigrating to the Dorsai.

  Entering the last two miles of his fifteen-mile daily run, he leaned into the beginning of the long slope up the hill that would bring him back to the shore of Lake Athan across from the home of Eachan Khan on the outskirts of the town of Foralie, on that world known as the Dorsai. His stride shortened, his breathing deepened, but aside from these changes there was no difference. He did not slacken speed.

  It had been nearly five months now since the casts had been taken off his legs to reveal a perfectly healthy, regrown left knee. The local medical fraternity had been eager to keep him available for tests and study of the essential miracle that had occurred, but Cletus had other things to do. Within a week, tottering along on legs that had just begun to relearn how to walk, he took ship with Melissa and Eachan Khan for the Dorsai. He had been here since, his engagement to Melissa an accepted fact, as a guest in Eachan’s household, and the time from his arrival until now had been spent in unrelenting physical self-training.

  The methods of that training were simple, and except in one respect, orthodox. Basically, he spent his days in walking, running, swimming and climbing. It was the climbing that provided the one unorthodox element to this routine, for Cletus had caused to be built, and continually added to since its construction, a sort of adult-sized jungle gym, a maze of steel pipes interconnected at different heights and angles that was now some thirty feet high, twenty feet wide and more than fifty feet long.

  Cletus’s day began now, six months after his departure from the hospital on Kultis, with a vertical climb, hands only and without pause, from the ground to the top of a rope suspended from a tree limb eighty feet above ground. Having reached the limb, he then moved a dozen feet farther out along its length, climbed down a shorter rope only fifty feet in length and set it swinging until the arc of his airborne travels brought him close enough to the top bar of the jungle gym for him to catch hold. The next thirty minutes or so were spent in clambering through the jungle gym by routes that had grown increasingly complex and torturous as the gym had been extended and Cletus’s physical condition had improved.

  At the far end of the jungle gym, his morning’s run—which, as has been said, was now fifteen miles—began. It was a run that began across country of a fairly level surface, but later led him among a variety of the steep hills and slopes that this mountainous territory provided. Here the altitude was eighty-four hundred feet above sea level, and the effect upon Cletus’s red blood cell count and coronary artery size had been remarkable.

  It ended with this long, steady uphill slope two miles in length. Just beyond the upper end of the slope, the ground dipped down again for about fifty yards among pine-like trees, and Cletus came to the edge of Lake Athan.

  He did not even break stride as he approached the bank, but went off it in a shallow dive directly into the waters of the lake. He surfaced and began swimming the half-mile distance across the lake to the shore above which the long, low-roofed, rather rustic shape of Eachan’s house could be seen, small among trees.

  The water of this mountain lake was cold, but Cletus was not chilled by it. His body, heated by the run, found it pleasantly cool. He swam, as he had done all the rest of his exercise, dressed in running shoes, socks, shorts and shirt; he was by now so accustomed to the weight of these water-heavy shoes and clothes upon him that he did not notice them.

  He swam powerfully, arms digging deep, his head rolling rhythmically toward his right shoulder to take deep breaths of the upland air. His feet churned a steady wake behind him. Almost before he had settled to the soothing rhythm of his swimming, he drove into the shallow water at the lake’s other side and got to his feet. He glanced at his wristwatch and trotted leisurely up the slope to the ground-floor sliding window that led directly into his bedroom.

  Ten minutes later, showered and changed, he joined Eachan and Melissa in the sunny dining room of the long house for lunch.

  “How did you do?” asked Melissa. She smiled at him with a sudden, spontaneous warmth, and a warm current of shared feeling sprang into existence between them. Six months of close association had destroyed all obvious barriers separating them. Cletus was too likable and Melissa too outgoing for them not to be drawn together under such close conditions. They had reached the stage now where what they did not say to each other was almost more important than their words.

  “Under six minutes average on the fifteen-mile run,” he answered. “A little over ten minutes crossing the lake.” He looked over at Eachan. “I think it’s time to set up that demonstration I planned. We can use the running track in the stadium at Foralie.”

  “I’ll attend to it,” said Eachan.

  Three days
later the demonstration took place. Present in the Foralie stadium under a warm August sun were the eighty-odd ranking Dorsai officers whom Eachan had invited. They sat down front in one section of the stand before a large screen fed by a battery of physiological monitoring equipment tuned to various transmitters on and within Cletus’s body.

  Cletus was in his usual running outfit. Neither the jungle gym nor a pool for swimming was in evidence, since this was to be a simple demonstration of endurance. As soon as the visiting officers were all seated, Eachan stood by to monitor the reports of various instruments onto the screen so that all could see them, and Cletus started running.

  The various mercenary officers present had all been made acquainted with Cletus’s history, particularly the events on Kultis, and the near miraculous regrowth of his wounded knee. They watched with interest while Cletus set a pace of nearly ten miles an hour around the half-mile track. After the first mile, he dropped back to a little better than eight miles an hour; his pulse, which had peaked at 170, dropped to about 140 and hung there.

  He was running quite easily and breathing steadily as he approached the four-mile mark. But then, although his speed did not decrease, his pulse began to climb once more, slowly, until by the end of the six miles it was almost up to 180. Here it peaked again, and from that point on he began slowly to lose speed. By the time he had completed the eighth mile he was down below seven miles an hour, and by the time he finished the ninth he was barely moving at six miles an hour.

  Clearly, he was approaching the exhaustion point. He pushed himself twice more around the track. Coming up toward the end of the tenth mile, he was barely jogging. Clearly, he had run himself out; but this kind of performance by anyone, let alone a man who had been a prosthetic cripple half a standard year before, was enough to waken a hum of amazement and admiration from the watchers.