Tactics of Mistake

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “I would never let you two kill each other,” she said. Her voice was strange.

  “No,” he said. “So you’ll wait two years. After that, you’ll be free.”

  “But why?” she said. “Why did you do it?”

  “Eachan would have followed you to Earth,” said Cletus. “That’s what Dow counted on. That’s what I couldn’t allow. I need Eachan Khan for what I’ve got to do.”

  He had been looking at her as he talked, but now his eyes had moved away from her. He was looking out the high, curtained window at one end of the bedroom, at the mountain peaks, now just beginning to be clouded with the afternoon rains that would in a few months turn to the first of autumn snows.

  She did not speak for a long time. “Then,” she said, at last “you never did love me?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, for the moment was upon him. But at the last minute, in spite of his determination, the words changed on his lips.

  “Did I ever say I did?” he answered, and, turning, went out of the room before she could say more.

  Behind him, as he closed the door, there was only silence.

  20.

  The next morning Cletus got busy readying the expeditionary contingent of new-trained and not yet new-trained Dorsais he would be taking with him to Newton. Several days later, as he sat in his private office at the Foralie training grounds, Arvid stepped in to say that there was a new emigrant to the Dorsai, an officer-recruit, who wanted to speak to him.

  “You remember him, I think, sir,” said Arvid, looking at Cletus a little grimly. “Lieutenant William Athyer—formerly of the Alliance Expeditionary Force on Bakhalla.”

  “Athyer?” said Cletus. He pushed aside the papers on the float desk in front of him. “Send him in, Arv.”

  Arvid stepped back out of the office. A few seconds later, Bill Athyer, whom Cletus had last seen drunkenly barring his way in the in-town spaceship terminal of Bakhalla, hesitantly appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in the brown uniform of a Dorsai recruit, with a probationary officer’s insignia where his first lieutenant’s silver bars had been worn. “Come in,” said Cletus, “and shut the door behind you.”

  Athyer obeyed and advanced into the room. “It’s good of you to see me, sir,” he said, slowly. “I don’t suppose you ever expected me to show up like this…“

  “Not at all,” said Cletus. “I’ve been expecting you. Sit down.” He indicated the chair in front of his desk. Athyer took it almost gingerly.

  “I don’t know how to apologize…“ he began.

  “Then don’t,” said Cletus. “I take it life has changed for you?”

  “Changed!” Athyer’s face lit up. “Sir, you remember at the Bakhalla Terminal…? I went back from there with my mind made up. I was going to go through everything you’d ever written—everything—with a fine-toothed comb, until I found something wrong, something false, I could use against you. You said not to apologize, but…“

  “And I meant it,” said Cletus. “Go on with whatever else you were going to tell me.”

  “Well, I… suddenly began to understand it, that’s all,” said Athyer. “Suddenly it began to make sense to me, and I couldn’t believe it! I left your books and started digging into everything else I could find in that Exotic library in Bakhalla on military art. And it was just what I’d always read, no more, no less. It was your writing that was different… Sir, you don’t know the difference!”

  Cletus smiled.

  “Of course, of course you do!” Athyer interrupted himself. “I don’t mean that. What I mean is, for example, I always had trouble with math. I wasn’t an Alliance Academy man, you know. I came in on one of the reserve officer programs and I could sort of slide through on math. And that’s what I did until one day when I ran into solid geometry. All at once the figures and the shapes came together—it was beautiful. Well, that was how it was with your writing, sir. All of a sudden, the art and the mechanics of military strategy came together. All the dreams I’d had as a kid of doing great things—and all at once I was reading how they could be done. Not just military things—all sorts and kinds of things.”

  “You saw that in what I’d written, did you?” asked Cletus.

  “Saw it!” Athyer reached up a hand and closed its fingers slowly on empty air. “I saw it as if it were there, three-dimensional, laid out in front of me. Sir, nobody knows what you’ve done in those volumes you’ve written. Nobody appreciates—and it’s not only what your work offers now, it’s what it offers in the future!”

  “Good,” said Cletus. “Glad to hear you think so. And now what can I do for you?”

  “I think you know, sir, don’t you?” Athyer said. “It’s because of what you’ve written that I came here, to the Dorsai. But I don’t want to be just one of your command. I want to be close, where I can go on learning from you. Oh, I know you won’t have any room for me on your personal staff right away, but if you could keep me in mind…“

  “I think room can be made for you,” said Cletus. “As I say, I’ve been more or less expecting you. Go see Commandant Arvid Johnson and tell him I said to take you on as his assistant. We’ll waive the full training requirement and you can go along with the group we’re taking to employment on Newton.”

  “Sir…“ Words failed Athyer.

  “That’s all, then,” said Cletus, raking back in front of him the papers he had pushed aside earlier. “You’ll find Arvid in the office outside.”

  He returned to his work. Two weeks later the Dorsai contingent for Newton landed there, ready for employment—and newly commissioned Force Leader Bill Athyer was among them.

  “I hope,” said Artur Walco several days after that, as he stood with Cletus watching the contingent at evening parade, “your confidence in yourself hasn’t been exaggerated, Marshal.”

  There was almost the hint of a sneer in his voice, as the chairman of the board of the Advanced Associated Communities on Newton used the title Cletus had adopted for himself as part of his general overhaul of unit and officer names among the new-trained Dorsai. They were standing together at the edge of the parade ground, with the red sun in the gray sky of Newton sinking to the horizon behind the flagstaff, its flag already half-lowered, as Major Swahili brought the regiment to the point of dismissal. Cletus turned to look at the thin, balding Newtonian.

  “Exaggeration of confidence,” he said, “is a fault in people who don’t know their business.”

  “And you do?” snapped Walco.

  “Yes,” answered Cletus.

  Walco laughed sourly, hunching his thin shoulders in their black jacket against the northern wind coming off the edge of the forest that grew right to the limits of the Newtonian town of Debroy, the same forest that rolled northward, unbroken for more than two hundred miles, to the stibnite mines and the Brozan town of Watershed.

  “Two thousand men may be enough to take those mines,” he said, “but your contract with us calls for you to hold the mines for three days or until we get Newtonian forces in to relieve you. And within twenty-four hours after you move into Watershed, the Brozans can have ten thousand regular troops on top of you. How you’re going to handle odds of five to one, I don’t know.”

  “Of course not,” said Cletus. The flag was all the way down now and Major Swahili had turned the parade over to his adjutant to dismiss the men. “It’s not your business to know. It’s only your business to write a contract with me providing that we get our pay only after control of the mines has been delivered to your troops. And that you’ve done. Our failure won’t cause your Advanced Associated Communities any financial loss.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Walco, viciously, “but my reputation’s at stake.”

  “So’s mine,” replied Cletus cheerfully.

  Walco snorted and went off. Cletus watched him go for a second, then turned and made his way to the Headquarters building of the temporary camp that had been set up for the Dorsais here on the edge of Debroy under the shadow of the forest. There
, in the map room, he found Swahili and Arvid waiting for him.

  “Look at this,” he said, beckoning them both over to the main map table, which showed in relief the broad band of forest, with Debroy at one end of the table and the stibnite mines around Watershed at the other. The other two men joined him at the Debroy end of the table. “Walco and his people expect us to fiddle around for a week or two, getting set here before we do anything. Whatever Brozan spies are keeping tab on the situation will accordingly pick up the same idea. But we aren’t going to waste time. Major…“

  He looked at Swahili, whose scarred, black face was bent with interest above the table top. Swahili lifted his eyes to meet Cletus’s.

  “We’ll start climatization training of the troops inside the edge of the forest here, tomorrow at first light,” Cletus said. “The training will take place no more than five miles deep in the forest, well below the Newtonian—Brozan frontier”—he pointed to a red line running through the forested area some twenty miles above Debroy. “The men will train by forces and groups, and they aren’t going to do well. They aren’t going to do well at all. It’ll be necessary to keep them out overnight and keep them at it until your officers are satisfied. Then they can be released, group by group, as their officers think they’re ready, and allowed to return to the camp here. I don’t want the last group out of the forest until two and a half days from tomorrow morning. You leave the necessary orders with your officers to see to that.”

  “I won’t be there?” asked Swahili.

  “You’ll be with me,” answered Cletus. He glanced at the tall young captain to his right. “So will Arvid and two hundred of our best men. We’ll have split off from the rest the minute we’re in the woods, dispersed into two-and three-man teams and headed north to rendezvous five miles south of Watershed, four days from now.”

  “Four days?” echoed Swahili. “That’s better than fifty miles a day on foot through unfamiliar territory.”

  “Exactly!” said Cletus. “That’s why no one—Newtonians or Brozans—will suspect we’d try to do anything like that. But you and I know, don’t we, Major, that our best men can make it?”

  His eyes met the eyes in Swahili’s dark, unchanging face.

  “Yes,” said Swahili.

  “Good,” said Cletus, stepping back from the table. “We’ll eat now, and work out the details this evening. I want you, Major, to travel along with Arv, here. I’ll take Force Leader Athyer along with me and travel with him.”

  “Athyer?” queried Swahili.

  “That’s right,” replied Cletus, dryly. “Wasn’t it you who told me he was coming along?”

  “Yes,” answered Swahili. It was true, oddly enough. Swahili seemed to have taken an interest in the newly recruited, untrained Athyer. It was an interest apparently more of curiosity than sentiment—for if ever two men were at opposite poles, it was the major and the force leader. Swahili was far and away the superior of all the new-trained Dorsais, men and officers alike, having surpassed everyone in the training, with the exception of Cletus in the matter of autocontrol. Clearly, however, Swahili was not one to let interest affect judgment. He looked with a touch of grim amusement at Cletus.

  “And, of course, since he’ll be with you, sir…“ he said.

  “All the way,” said Cletus, levelly. “I take it you’ve no objection to having Arv with you?”

  “No, sir.” Swahili’s eyes glanced at the tall young commandant with something very close—as close as he ever came—to approval.

  “Good,” said Cletus. “You can take off, then. I’ll meet you both here in an hour after we’ve eaten.”

  “Yes.”

  Swahili went out. Cletus turned toward the door, and found Arvid still there, standing almost in his way. Cletus stopped.

  “Something the matter, Arv?” Cletus asked.

  “Sir…" began Arvid, and he did not seem to be able to continue.

  Cletus made no attempt to assist the conversation. He merely stood, waiting.

  “Sir,” said Arvid again, “I’m still your aide, aren’t I?”

  “You are,” said Cletus.

  “Then”—Arvid’s face was stiff and a little pale—“can I ask why Athyer should be with you in an action like this, instead of me?”

  Cletus looked at him coldly. Arvid held himself stiffly, and his right shoulder was still a little hunched under his uniform coat, drawn forward by the tightening of the scar tissue of the burn he had taken back at the BOQ in Bakhalla, protecting Cletus from the Neuland gunmen.

  “No, Commandant,” said Cletus, slowly. “You can’t ask me why I decide what I do—now or ever.”

  They stood facing each other.

  “Is that clear?” Cletus said, after a moment.

  Arvid stood even more stiffly. His eyes seemed to have lost Cletus, and his gaze traveled past him now to some spot on the farther wall.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Then you’d probably better be getting to the evening meal, hadn’t you?” said Cletus.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Arvid turned and went out. After a second, Cletus sighed and also left for his own quarters and a solitary meal served there by his orderly.

  At nine the following morning, he was standing with Force Leader Athyer five miles inside the forest fringe, when Swahili came up to him and handed him the matchbox-sized metal case of a peep-map. Cletus tucked it into a jacket pocket of his gray-green field uniform.

  “It’s oriented?” he asked Swahili. The major nodded.

  “With the camp as base point,” Swahili answered. “The rest of the men tagged for the expedition have already left—in two- and three-man teams, just as you said. The captain and I are ready to go.”

  “Good,” said Cletus. “We’ll get started, too, Bill and I. See you at the rendezvous point, five miles below Watershed, in approximately ninety-one hours.”

  “We’ll be there, sir.” With a single, slightly humorous glance at Athyer, Swahili turned and left.

  Cletus turned the peep-map over in the palm of his hand, exposing the needle of the orientation compass under its transparent cover. He pressed the button in the side of the case and the needle swung clockwise some forty degrees until it pointed almost due north into the forest. Cletus lined himself up with a tree trunk as far off as he could see through the dimness of the forest in that direction. Then he put the peephole at one end of the instrument to his eye and gazed through it. Within he saw the image of what appeared to be a ten-by-twelve foot relief map of the territory between his present position and Watershed. A red line marked the route that had been programmed into the map. Reaching for another button on the case, he cranked the view in close to study the detail of the first half-dozen miles. It was all straight forest, with no bog land to be crossed or avoided.

  “Come on,” he said over his shoulder to Athyer. Putting the peep-map into his pocket, he started off at a jog trot.

  Athyer followed him. For the first couple of hours they trotted along side by side without speaking, enclosed in the dimness and silence of the northern Newtonian forest. There were no flying creatures, neither birds nor insects, in this forest, only the amphibious and fish-like life of its lakes, swamps and bogs. Under the thick cover of the needle-like leaves that grew only on the topmost branches of the trees, the ground was bare except for the leafless tree trunks and lower branches but covered with a thick coat of blackened, dead needles fallen from the trees in past seasons. Only here and there, startling and expectedly, there would be a thick clump of large, flesh-colored leaves as much as four feet in length, sprouting directly from the needle bed to signal the presence of a spring or some other damp area of the jungle floor beneath.

  After the first two hours, they fell into an alternate rhythm of five minutes at a jog trot, followed by five minutes at a rapid walk. Once each hour they stopped for five minutes to rest, dropping at full length upon the soft, thick, needle carpet without bothering even to remove the light survival packs they wo
re strapped to their shoulders.

  For the first half hour or so, the going had been effortful. But after that they warmed to the physical movement, their heartbeats slowed, their breathing calmed—and it seemed almost as if they could go on forever like this. Cletus ran or walked, with the larger share of his mind abstract, far away in concentration on other problems. Even the matter of periodically checking their progress with the directional compass on the peep-map was an almost automatic action for him, performed by reflex.

  He was roused from this at last by the fading of the already dim light of the forest about them. Newton’s sun, hidden between its double screen of the treetops’ foliage and the high, almost constant cloud layer that gave the sky its usual gray, metallic look, was beginning to set.

  “Time for a meal break,” said Cletus. He headed for a flat spot at the base of a large tree trunk and dropped into a sitting position, cross-legged with his back to the trunk, stripping off his shoulder pack as he did so. Athyer joined him on the ground. “How’re you doing?”

  “Fine, sir,” grunted Athyer.

  In fact, the other man was looking as good as he claimed to feel, and this Cletus was glad to see. There was only a faint sheen of perspiration on Athyer’s face, and his breathing was deep and unhurried.

  They broke out a thermo meal pack apiece and punctured the seal to start warming the food inside. By the time it was hot enough to eat, the darkness around them had closed in absolutely. It was as black as the inside of some sealed underground room.

  “Half an hour until the moons start to rise,” Cletus said into the darkness in the direction in which he had last looked to see the seated Athyer. “Try and get some sleep, if you can.”

  Cletus lay back on the needles, and made his limbs and body go limp. In a few seconds, he felt the familiar drifting sensation. Then it seemed that there were perhaps thirty seconds of inattention, and he opened his eyes to find a new, pale light filtering down through the leaf cover of the forest.