Soldier, Ask Not

by Gordon R. Dickson

  I looked back at him. I let him wait for a second or two.

  "No," I said. "No, Mr. O'Doyne, I haven't."

  He stood, unmoving, as if my words had fixed him in position, legs spread a little wide, chin high, challenging me.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "Good-bye."

  I went out. I do not think he even answered my farewell.

  I went across to Government house and spent a twenty minutes full of reassuring, pleasant platitudes in interview with Charles Perrinni, President of the St. Marie government. Then I returned, by way of New San Marcos and Joseph's Town to the spaceport and the spaceliner for Earth.

  I paused only to check my mail on Earth and then transshipped immediately for Harmony, and the site on that planet of the United Council of Churches, which together governed both Friendly worlds of Harmony and Association. I spent five days in the city there, cooling my heels in the offices and wardrooms of minor officers of their so-called Public Relations Bureau.

  On the sixth day, a note I had sent immediately on arriving to Field Commander Wassel paid its dividend. I was taken to the Council building, itself; and, after being searched for weapons-there were some violent sectarian differences between Church groups on the Friendly worlds themselves, and they made no exceptions, evidently, even for Newsmen- I was admitted to a lofty-ceilinged office with bare walls. There, surrounded by a few straight-backed chairs, in the middle of the black-and-white tile of the floor, sat a heavy desk with the seated man behind it dressed entirely in black.

  The only white things about him were his face and hands. All else was covered. But his shoulders were as square and broad as a barn door and above them his white face had eyes as black as the clothing, which seemed to blaze at me. He got up and came around the desk, towering half a head over me, to offer his hand.

  "God be with you," he said.

  Our hands met. There was the hint of a hard touch of amusement in the thin line of his straight mouth; and the glance of his eyes seemed to probe me like twin doctor's scalpels. He held my hand, not hard, but with the hint of a strength that could crush my fingers as if in a vise, if he chose.

  I was face to face, at last, with the Eldest of that Council of Elders who ruled the combined churches of Harmony and Association, him who was called Bright, First among the Friendlies.

  Chapter 19

  "You come well recommended by Field Commander Wassel," he said after he had shaken my hand. "An unusual thing for a Newsman." It was a statement, not a sneer; and I obeyed his invitation-almost more order than invitation-to sit, as he went back around to sit down behind his desk. He faced me across it. There was power in the man, the promise of a black flame. Like the promise, it suddenly occurred to me, of the flame latent in the gunpowder, stored in 1687 by the Turks within the Parthenon, when a shell fired by the Venetian army under Morosini exploded the black grains and blew out the center of that white temple. There had always been a special dark corner of hatred in me for that shell and that army-for if the Parthenon had been living refutation of Mathias' darkness to me as a boy, the destruction wrought by that shell had been evidence of how that darkness conquered, even in the heart of light.

  So, viewing Eldest Bright, I connected him in my mind with that old hate, though I was careful to shield my feelings from his eyes. Only in Padma had I felt such a penetrating power of gaze, before now-and there was a man here, too, behind the gaze.

  For the eyes themselves were the eyes of a Torquemada, that prime mover of the Inquisition in ancient Spain-as others had remarked before me; for the Friendly Churches were not without their own repressers and extinguishers of heresy. But behind those eyes moved the political intelligence of a mind that knew when to leash or when to loose the powers of two planets. For the first time I realized the feeling of someone who, stepping into the lion's cage alone for the first time, hears the steel door click shut behind him.

  For the first time, also, since I had stood in the Index Room of the Final Encyclopedia and loosened the hinges of my knees-for what if this man had no weaknesses; and in trying to control him, I only gave my plans away?

  But the habits of a thousand interviews were coming to my rescue and even as the doubts struck and clung to me, my tongue was working automatically.

  ". . .the utmost in cooperation from Field Commander Wassel and his men on New Earth," I said. "I appreciated it highly."

  "I, too," said Bright harshly, his eyes burning upon me, "appreciated a Newsman without bias. Otherwise you wouldn't be here in my office interviewing me. The work of the Lord between the stars leaves me little time for providing amusement for the ungodly of seven systems. Now, what's the reason for this interview?"

  "I've been thinking of making a project," I said, "of revealing the Friendlies in a better light to people on the other worlds-"

  "To prove your loyalty to the Creed of your profession-as Wassel said?" interrupted Bright.

  "Why, yes," I said. I stiffened slightly in my chair. "I was orphaned at an early age; and the dream of my growing years was to join the News Services-"

  "Don't waste my time, Newsman!" Bright's hard voice chopped like an axe across the unfinished section of my sentence. He got to his feet once more, suddenly, as if the energy in him was too great to be contained, and prowled around his desk to stand looking down at me, thumbs hooked in the belt at his narrow waist, his bony, middle-aged face bent above me. "What's your Creed to me, who move in the light of God's word?"

  "We all move in our own lights, in our own way," I said. He was standing so close above me that I could not get to my feet to face him as my instincts urged me. It was as if he held me physically pinned in my chair, beneath him. “If it weren't for my Creed I wouldn't be here now. Perhaps you don't know what happened to me and my brother-in-law at the hands of one of your Groupmen on New Earth-"

  "I know." The two words were merciless. "You'll have been apologized to, some time since, for that. Listen to me, Newsman." His thin lips quirked slightly in a sour smile. "You are not Anointed of the Lord."

  "No," I said.

  "In those who follow God's word, there may be a cause to believe that they act from faith in something more than their own selfish interests. But in those without the Light, how can there be any faith to anything but themselves?" The quirking smile on his own lips mocked his own words, mocked at the canting phrases in which he called me a liar-and dared me to deny the sophistication in him that had permitted him to see through me.

  I stiffened this time with a look of outrage.

  "You're sneering at my Newsman's Creed only because it isn't your own!" I snapped at him.

  My outburst moved neither him nor his quirk of a smile.

  "The Lord would not choose a fool to be Eldest over the Council of our Churches," he said-and turning his back on me, walked back around to sit down once more behind his desk. "You should have thought of that before you came to Harmony, Newsman. But at any rate you know it now."

  I stared at him, almost blinded by the sudden brilliance of my own understanding. Yes, I knew it now-and in knowing it, suddenly saw how he had delivered himself out of his own mouth into my hands.

  I had been afraid that he might turn out to have no weakness of which I could take advantage as I had taken advantage of lesser men and women with my words. And it was true-he had no ordinary weakness. But by the same token he had an extraordinary one. For his weakness was his strength, that same sophistication that had lifted him to be ruler and leader of his people. His weakness was that to have become what he was, he had to be as fanatic as the worst of them were-but with something more, as well. He had to have the extra strength that made him able to lay his fanaticism aside, when it came to interfere in his dealing with the leaders of other worlds--with his equals and opposites between the stars. It was this, this he had unknowingly admitted to me just now.

  Unlike the furious-eyed, black-clad ones about him, he was not limited to the fanatic's view of the universe that painted everything in colors of either
pure black or pure white. He was able to perceive and deal in shades between-in shades of gray, as well. In short, he could be a politician when he chose-and, as a politician, I could deal with him.

  As a politician, I could lead him into a politician's error.

  I crumpled. I let the stiffness go out of me suddenly as I sat in my chair with his eyes newly upon me. And I heaved a long, shuddering breath.

  "You're right," I said in a dead voice. I got to my feet. "Well, it's no use now. I'll be going-"

  "Go?" His voice cracked like a rifle shot, stopping me. "Did I say the interview was over? Sit down!"

  Hastily I sat down again. I was trying to look pale, and I think I succeeded. For all I had suddenly understood him, I was still in the lion's cage, and he was still the lion.

  "Now," he said, staring at me, "what did you really hope to gain from me-and from us who are the Chosen of God on these two worlds?"

  I wet my lips.

  "Speak up," he said. He did not raise his voice, but the low, carrying tones of it promised retribution on his part if I did not obey.

  "The Council-" I muttered.

  "Council? The Council of our Elders? What about it?"

  "Not that," I said, looking down at the floor. "The Council of the Newsman's Guild. I wanted a seat on it. You Friendlies could be the reason I could get it. After Dave-after what happened to my brother-in-law-my showing with Wassel that I could do my job without bias even to you people-that's been getting me attention, even in the Guild. If I could go on with that-if I could raise public opinion in the other seven systems in your favor-it'd raise me, too, in the public eye. And in the Guild."

  I stopped speaking. Slowly I looked up at him. He was staring at me with harsh humor.

  "Confession cleanses the soul even of such as you," he said grimly. "Tell me, you’ve given thought to the improvement of our public image among the cast-aside of the Lord on the other worlds?"

  "Why, that depends," I said. "I'd have to look around here for story material. First-"

  "Never mind that now!"

  He rose once more behind his desk and his eyes commanded me to rise also, so I did.

  "We'll go into this in a few days," he said. His Torquemada's smile saluted me. "Good-day for the present, Newsman."

  "Good-day," I managed to say. I turned and went out, shakily.

  Nor was the shakiness entirely assumed. My legs felt weak, as if from tense balancing on the edge of a precipice, and a dry tongue clung to the roof of my dry mouth.

  I puttered around the town the next few days, ostensibly picking up background material. Then, on the fourth day after I had seen Eldest Bright, I was called once more to his office. He was standing when I came in, and he remained standing, halfway between the door and his desk.

  "Newsman," he said abruptly, as I came in, "it occurs to me that you can't favor us in your news reports without your fellow Guild members noticing that favoring. If this is so, what good are you to me?"

  "I didn't say I'd favor you," I answered indignantly. "But if you show me something favorable on which I can report, I can report on it."

  "Yes." He looked hard at me with the black flames of his eyes. "Come and look at our people, then."

  He led me out of his office and down an elevator tube to a garage where a staff car was waiting. We got in and its driver took us out of the Council City, through a countryside that was bare and stony, but neatly divided into farms.

  "Observe," said Bright dryly as we went through a small town that was hardly more than a village. "We grow only one crop thickly on our poor worlds-and those are the bodies of our young men, to be hired out as soldiers that our people may not starve and our Faith endure. What disfigures these young men and the other people we pass that those on the other worlds should resent them so strongly, even while hiring them to fight and die in their foreign wars?"

  I turned and saw his eyes on me with grim amusement, once again.

  "Their-attitudes," I said cautiously.

  Bright laughed, a short lion's cough of a laugh deep in his chest.

  "Attitudes!" he said harshly. "Put a plain word to it, Newsman! Not attitudes- pride! Pride! Bone-poor, skilled only in hand toil and weapon-handling, as these people you see are-still they look as if from lofty mountains down on the dust-born slugs who hire them, knowing that those employers may be rich in worldly wealth and furniture, fat in foodstuffs and padded in soft raiment-yet when all peoples pass alike beyond the shadow of the grave, then they, who have wallowed in power and wealth, will not be endured even to stand, cap in hand, below those gates of silver and of gold which we, who have suffered and are Anointed, pass singing through."

  He smiled at me, his savage, predator's smile, across the width of the staff car.

  "What can you find in all you see here," he said, "to teach a proper humbleness and a welcome to those who hire the Bespoken of the Lord?''

  He was mocking me again. But I had seen through him on that first visit in his office, and the subtle path to my own end was becoming clearer as we talked. So his mockery bothered me less and less.

  "It isn't pride or humbleness on either side that I can do much about," I said. "Besides, that isn't what you need. You don't care what employers think of your troops, as long as they hire them. And employers will hire them, if you can make your people merely bearable-not necessarily lovable, but bearable."

  "Stop here, driver!" interrupted Bright; and the car pulled to a halt.

  We were in a small village. Sober, black-clad people moved between the buildings of bubble-plastic- temporary structures which would long since on other worlds have been replaced with more sophisticated and attractive housing.

  "Where are we?" I asked.

  “A lesser town called Remembered-of-the-Lord,” he answered, and dropped the window on his side of the car. "And here comes someone you know."

  In fact, a slim figure in a Force-Leader's uniform was approaching the car. It reached us, stooped slightly, and the face of Jamethon Black looked calmly in on both of us.

  "Sir?" he said to Bright.

  "This officer," said Bright, to me, "seemed qualified once for high service in the ranks of us who served God's will. But six years past, he was attracted by a daughter of a foreign world who would not have him; and since then he has seemed to lose his will to rise in rank among us." He turned to Jamethon. "Force-Leader," he said. "You have seen this man twice. Once in his home on Earth six years ago, when you sought his sister in marriage; and again last year on New Earth when he sought from you a pass to protect his assistant between the battle lines. Tell me, what do you know about him?"

  Jamethon's eyes looked across the interior of the car into mine.

  "Only that he loved his sister and wanted a better life for her, perhaps, than I could give her," said Jamethon in a voice as calm as his face. "And that he wished his brother-in-law well, and sought protection for him." He turned to look directly into the eyes of Bright. "I believe him to be an honest man and a good one, Eldest."

  "I did not ask for your beliefs!" snapped Bright.

  "As you wish," said Jamethon, still calmly facing the older man; and I felt a rage swelling up inside me so that I thought that I would burst out with it, no matter what the consequences.

  Rage against Jamethon, it was. For not only had he the effrontery to recommend me to Bright as an honest man and a good one, but because there was something else about him that was like a slap in the face. For a moment, I could not identify it. And then it came to me. He was not afraid of Bright. And I had been so, in that first interview.

  Yet I was a Newsman, with the immunity of the Guild behind me; and he was a mere Force-Leader facing his own Commander-in-Chief, the Warlord of two worlds, of which Jamethon's was only one. How could he-? And then it came to me, so that I almost ground my teeth in fury and frustration. For it was with Jamethon no different than it had been with the Groupman on New Earth who had denied me a pass to keep Dave safe. That Groupman had been instantly re
ady to obey that Bright, who was the Eldest, but felt in himself no need to bow before that other Bright, who was merely the man.

  In the same way now Bright held the life of Jamethon in his hand, but unlike the way it had been with me, in holding this he held the lesser part of the young man before him, rather than the greater.

  "Your leave home here is ended, Force-Leader," Bright said sharply. "Tell your family to send on your effects to Council City and join us now. I'm appointing you aide and assistant to this Newsman from now on. And we'll promote you Commandant to make the post worthwhile."

  "Sir," said Jamethon emotionlessly with an inclination of his head. He stepped back into the building from which he had just emerged, before coming back out a few moments later to join us. Bright ordered the staff car turned about and so we returned to the city and his office.

  When we got back there, Bright turned me loose with Jamethon to get acquainted with the Friendly situation in and around Council City. Consequently, the two of us, Jamethon and I, did a certain amount of sightseeing, though not much, and I returned early to my hotel.

  It required very little in the way of perception to see that Jamethon had been assigned to act as a spy upon me while performing the functions of an aide. However, I said nothing about it, and Jamethon said nothing at all, so that, almost strangely, we two moved around Council City, and its related neighborhood, in the days that followed like a couple of ghosts, or men under a vow not to speak to each other. It was a strange silence of mutual consent that agreed that the only things worth talking about between us-Eileen, and Dave and the rest-would reward any discussion only with a pain that would make the discussion unprofitable.

  Meanwhile, I was summoned from time to time to the office of Eldest Bright. He saw me more or less briefly on these occasions and spoke of little that was to the point of my announced reason for being on the Friendlies and in partnership with him. It was as if he were waiting for something to happen. And eventually I understood what that was. He had set Jamethon to check me out, while he himself checked out the interstellar situation which, as Eldest of the Friendly Worlds, he faced alone, searching for the situation and the moment in which he could best make use of this self-seeking Newsman who had offered to improve the public image of his people.