Test of Fire (1982)

by Ben Bova

"We did—the army that Kobol put together and I led."

  "And who's in that army?"

  Puzzled, Alec answered, "Who's in it? Men from all over: as far south as Florida, as close as some of the villages just over the hills from here."

  "And who else?" Douglas' eyes were gleaming.

  Alec thought a moment. "Us," he finally realized.

  "Men from the settlement."

  Douglas leaned back on the pillows, satisfied.

  "Excellent. You got the right answer with only a few prods. You might make a real leader yet. An army made up of bands of men who've been fighting each other for the past twenty-some years —raiders and farmers, city barbarians and fishermen from the warm country—plus you lunar people with your high technology. For the first time since the sky burned and organization of Earth and Moon people has worked together."

  Alec blinked at him. "What's so marvelous about that?"

  "I'll tell you." Douglas was obviously enjoying this; his voice had regained some of its former strength. "When the sky burned civilization on Earth ended. But on the Moon we were all right — for the time being. Then the leaders in the settlement got the notion that there was nothing they could do to help what was left of Earth's people."

  "They were right," Alec said. 'They were barely able to survive themselves, those first years."

  "They were right, at that time," Douglas corrected. "But that doesn't mean the decision was right for all time. From that first decision, it was a short step to decide that the settlement could survive on its own, and all they needed from Earth was an occasional re-supply of the things that couldn't be produced on the Moon."

  "The fissionables."

  "And medicinal plants, a few other things. So while the lunar people were looking down their noses at the so-called barbarians of Earth, it was they who were really behaving like barbarians — raiding Earth for what they wanted but could not or would not produce for themselves. That's barbarism!"

  "Now wait . . ."

  But Douglas plowed on. "The truth is, the settlement cannot survive on its own and never could. Genetically it's a dead end. Already the cancer rate and birth defects are skyrocketing."

  Alec said, "We've been through all this before."

  "Indeed we have. But now we have the opportunity to set things straight. You're in command of a joint Earth-Moon army. You're sitting on the fissionables that the settlement wants. You can force them to start working with the people here on Earth, to start rebuilding civilization in earnest. What I've done is to set the stage. Now you can make it actually happen."

  Alec felt the strength leach out of him. His jaw fell open. When he realized he was gaping, he straightened up in the chair and asked, "Me? You want me . . ." He ran out of words.

  "Yes, you," Douglas said gently. "I've been waiting for you for twenty years, son."

  "But you tried to kill me!"

  "No, I didn't. I tried to see what you were made of. I set up conditions that would test you, so we could both find out what you were made of. You came through in fine shape. You survived. What's more, you learned. You understand now exactly what I'm saying, and you know that I'm right. I can see it."

  "No..."

  "Yes!" Douglas was beaming now. "You're the leader of this entire ramshackle alliance. You're the one man with the power to force those hothouse lovelies up there to rejoin their brothers and sisters here on Earth. Alone, separated from the knowledge and technology of the Moon, Earth's civilization will need another five centuries to be rekindled. Nobody knows that better than I do! I've spent twenty years bringing a miniscule number of people back from absolute barbarism as far as a feudal society."

  Douglas's fists clenched. "But the lunar settlement— alone, separated from Earth, cut off from the lifeblood of the human race, the genetic pool — the settlement will die. There's no other word for it. They'll be dead within another two generations. Three, at most."

  Alec heard Kobol's voice in his mind, his response to the question about what would happen when the fissionables ran out. "Fifty years is a long time, we won't be around to worry about it"

  "You're worrying about my children," Alec said to his father.

  "Your grandchildren."

  "But why did you set up this battle? Why couldn't we have done this peacefully?"

  Douglas's smile turned into a sardonic grimace.

  "Would you have believed me? I tried to tell you. And do you think those barbarians out there would have kindly consented to work together in sweet brotherhood for the furtherance of an ideal they can't even imagine? They have no conception of what civilization means, you know. Not even the best of them. Oh, they'll follow a leader they can trust or someone who brings them victories and loot. But all they really understand is survival, and survival means fighting" He paused, but only for an instant. "What brought all those fine fighting men here? A yearning for culture or the chance for loot?"

  "Loot, of course," Alec answered.

  "Damned right. And you'd better keep them happy, too, until you can halfway civilize them. Get them up at least to the standard of loyalty the old Mongol hordes had. You can build a civilization with warriors like that, even though they themselves are barbarians."

  But a new thought was burning through Alec's awareness. "You . . ." he said. "What am I supposed to do with you?"

  Douglas snorted. "Kill me, of course! I'm superfluous now. I'm a problem for you. My men will stay loyal to me as long as I'm alive, and the people in the settlement won't trust you if you let me live."

  "But your men won't follow me if I have you executed." It's insane! You don't sit in a bedroom and talk with your father about killing him!

  "They'll follow Will, and Will is fully aware of the plan. If he's loyal to you, the rest of my people will be, too. That's why it was important for both of you to survive the battle."

  "It's crazy," Alec muttered.

  "No," Douglas corrected. "It's politics. A little rougher than the polite debating orgies you've seen in the settlement, but basically the same thing. To make yourself leader of the whole coalition, you've got to get rid of me."

  "I came to Earth to kill you."

  "I know," Douglas said, softly, kindly. "Now you can get the job done."

  Alec jumped up from the chair, knocking it over backwards behind him. "No, I can't do it! I can't!"

  "Don't be an idiot," Douglas snapped. "You've got to."

  But Alec bolted from the room and ran down the stairs and out into the night.

  Chapter 29

  Ferret had spent the day hiding in the woods, terrified by the horrendous sounds of explosions and gunfire that rocked the world and made the very air taste of burning, acrid fumes. He knew that Alec was there in the midst of the fighting, and all the others. But he clung to the safe, living earth, deep in the brush that grew among the younger trees along the edge of the forest. Instinct told him to run away, to go deeper into the mottled shadows of the woods, to hide so far away that the guns and explosions would never reach him.

  Yet he stayed at the edge of the trees, despite his terror, held in an agonizing balance between his fear and the dim, wordless loyalty he felt for Alec.

  The Sun was halfway down the western sky when the fighting stopped. Curled up behind a sturdy oak, half buried in the brush at its base, Ferret waited for the better part of an hour after he realized that the gunfire and explosions had ended. He listened intently, heard nothing but the renewed chirp of birds, the buzz of insects. A squirrel popped out of the bushes a few feet in front of him, stood on its hind legs and sniffed the air, nose twitching. It looked around hesitantly, then scampered up the tree that Ferret hid behind.

  The world had gone back to normal. It was safe to come out. Ferret took a few hesitant steps out into the slanting light of light afternoon. The sky over toward the valley was gray with smoke. That was where Alec would be. He started walking toward the smoke, toward Alec. Maybe he would find a rabbit or squirrel along the way and bring it to Alec. It wou
ld be good to eat.

  A truckload of jubilant troops rattled by on the road leading into the valley, slowed down, and he clambered aboard. They were strangers to him, but they were all laughing and whooping with relieved excitement. Ferret laughed with them, feeling relieved too.

  By the time they reached the base it was full night. The truck squealed to a halt in front of one of the big warehouses, near the airfield. Troops were milling everywhere, still full of energy, still adrenalin-high.

  "Where's th' fuckin' women?" one man yelled.

  "There was supposed t'be gold in the streets here," someone else bellowed. "I don't see no gold."

  "Hey, never mind that!" said an excited, high pitched voice. "They found booze over in that warehouse! Real stuff! Wine and liquor and all! C'mon!"

  With a ragged roar, the soldiers of the victorious army surged toward the warehouse, carrying Ferret along with them the way a tidal wave carries a bit of flotsam.

  Jameson was waiting outside Douglas's house when Alec came running blindly from his meeting with his father. He pointed wordlessly to the sullen red glow lighting up the night sky.

  "They're torching the warehouses," Jameson said. "Kobol's barbarians."

  Alec stared at the glowering light. Sparks shot up. He said nothing, desperately trying to focus his concentration on what was happening. But his mind was still filled with the image of his father calmly discussing his own execution.

  "We've locked up all the weapons, ammo, and vehicles," Jameson was telling Alec. "And the prisoners are under guard by our own men. But those warehouses ..." Jameson shook his head.

  "We just don't have enough reliable troops to keep the barbarians away from everything."

  With an effort, Alec made himself ask, "What's in those warehouses?"

  "Machinery, spare parts . . . one of them has several hundred crates of wine and grain alcohol, from what Will tells me."

  "They won't burn that," Alec said.

  Jameson turned his bird-of-prey visage toward the glowing flames. "Might be a good idea to let them have their fun tonight."

  "And let them destroy everything they can get their hands on?" Alec shook his head. "Get fifty men and four laser trucks. Find Will and ask him to join us, with as many reliable men as he can muster."

  An instant of skepticism flashed across Jameson's face.

  Alec said, "If we let them dissolve into rabble they'll be killing each other before sunrise."

  "There is that," Jameson admitted.

  Within half an hour they met at the motor pool, an ancient garage where voices boomed hollowly off the metal walls and silent trucks. Alec laid out a battle plan for the men who assembled there.

  "They're rampaging through the warehouses, burning whatever they can't drink or carry. We'll converge on the warehouse area from three different directions," he traced lines with his finger on the street map spread across the oil-smeared table before him, "and get them under control."

  Jameson looked doubtful. "If they decide to fight us . . ."

  "They won't if we work things properly," Alec said.

  Will Russo agreed with a nod. "Especially if we pack them in pretty tight here, where the streets converge. They won't be in a fighting mood."

  His hand sliding to the pistol strapped to his hip, Alec added, "And if we grab the ringleaders and make examples out of them, the rest will calm down fast enough."

  Three columns of heavily armed troops converged on the burning warehouses and the drunken, rampaging men. In the guttering light of the fires that crackled through the warehouse windows and roofs, the looters slowly realized that they were being hemmed in, herded toward the open area where the streets came together.

  And waiting for them there, in front of the only warehouse that had not yet been torched, were a quartet of laser trucks, their firing mirrors pointed at street level.

  Alec stood on the back of one of the trucks with an electrically-powered megaphone in his hand.

  "Listen to me" he commanded, his voice magnified to the dimensions of godhood. "Listen to me, because the men who don't will be dead before the Sun rises."

  They stood in a befuddled, drunken, sullen mass draped with blankets and sacks of flour and wine bottles and new boots and less identifiable plunder. The fires groaned at their backs. A wall collapsed, showering sparks into the night sky.

  "Who started this?" Alec demanded. "I want the ringleaders, and I want them now."

  The men muttered and shifted on their suddenly-tired feet. They stared at the ground or glanced at each other. Alec saw that many of them had left their rifles and automatic weapons behind, once they started looting. But there were still plenty of pistols and carbines among them.

  "If you think that your discipline has ended just because you won a battle today, then think again,"

  Alec boomed at them. "Now, who started this looting? Bring them up front, where I can deal with them the way they deserve." He pulled the pistol from its holster.

  No one moved, except for the nervous shuffling of little boys caught being naughty.

  "All right," Alec said, his voice as cold as sharpened steel, "then we'll do it the way the Roman legions did it. Jameson—pick out ten men at random. Now."

  With a dozen fully armed troops beside him, Jameson began grabbing men by their arms and shoving them toward the truck where Alec stood.

  He did not go deeply into the sullen crowd; he picked the men from the front few rows.

  Suddenly there was a movement from deep in the crowd. A single figure was worming its way toward the front.

  "Alec, Alec . . . me. Me. Me!"

  The looters backed away from him, and Alec recognized Ferret making his way up to the front, to join the men that were going to be executed.

  "Me, Alec!" Ferret said, his pinched face smiling innocently in the glow of the smoldering fires.

  "Pick me!"

  The pistol suddenly felt unbearably heavy in Alec's hand. The weight of the world had somehow been absorbed by the square-snouted shining black gun.

  He looked down at the faces of the men standing at his feet. The looters whom Jamesom had shoved to the front looked up at him, sullen, afraid, drunk. Ferret was smiling, a child's hopeful, expectant smile. The crowd had melted back, away from the men who were doomed.

  Alec let his arm drop to his side. The gun was too heavy to hold up. Jameson stood frozen at the edge of the crowd, his strong hand locked onto the shoulder of one of the looters.

  "I was bad, Alec," Ferret said. "I'm sorry."

  It was the longest sentence Alec had ever heard out of him.

  He raised the bullhorn to his lips once more and said slowly, "You've been saved. All of you—you've been saved by this one man."

  An audible sigh went through the crowd.

  Holstering the gun, Alec said, "You've had all the fun you're going to. From here on, there will be no more looting. You are part of an army — a victorious army. You have a right to be proud of your victory. But you are going to follow orders and maintain discipline. Anyone who can't follow orders, from this moment on, will be shot. You've been reprieved tonight, but from now on there will be no second chances for any of you."

  They muttered sullenly, but did no more than that.

  Alec realized that they needed more than the threat of discipline. The stick by itself was useless, unless there was a carrot attached to it.

  "You are going to become the richest men on Earth," he said, and waited for a moment for their response. They stirred, they murmured. "Not from looting. That's over and done with. You're going to become rich from your fair share of the riches that this land can provide.

  "You've spent your lives as raiders, as rat packs, and your lives have been short and painful. But now you are going to live safer, more comfortable lives. You will never have to worry about a meal or a bed again. You will live longer and better than you ever dreamed would be possible. And we—all of us, together—will rule this entire land."

  There were mor
e than a thousand men standing there. The crowd surged, edged closer toward Alec.

  "Your days of looting and stealing are finished," he told them, "because you will no longer have to loot and steal. You'll get everything you've ever wanted, and more of it than you ever saw in your lives."

  "What about women?" a voice from the rear shouted.

  "When you're a raider, a looter, the women run away and hide," Alec answered into the bullhorn.

  "When you're a member of the army that rules the Earth, the women will chase after you!"

  They laughed. Alec could feel the tension, the sullenness, easing out of them.

  "All right, then," Alec said firmly. "From this moment on you are members of the army that will rule the world. You will follow orders. And when tomorrow dawns, this world will see something it hasn't seen since the sky burned: a new force that will conquer everything that stands in its way!"

  They cheered. They actually cheered. Alec watched them, wondering, Will I always be able to control them? It was like riding atop a wild animal. Grimly, he realized, It will always be a battle to stay in control.

  He spent the rest of the night touring the base, riding atop the battle-dented truck and checking every street and building in the area. Quiet prevailed.

  The men were exhausted from the battle, drunk with the wine they had found and the exhilaration of being alive when so many others had died. Now the wine and the exhaustion and the emotional fatigue had caught up with them. A taste of discipline was the only excuse most of them needed to fold up into the oblivion of sleep.

  With the sunrise came Angela.

  She arrived in a horse-drawn wagon, protected by six village youths armed with ancient rifles and shotguns. The posted guards stopped her at the edge of the base. She asked to see Douglas. The guards radioed for Jameson, who in turn informed Alec.

  He had her driven to his quarters, the house they had shared to many months earlier. Alec was waiting for her in the still-unfurnished living room when her wagon creaked to a stop. She jumped down and walked straight to the front door.