Soldier, Ask Not

by Gordon R. Dickson

  I looked. The little valley or meadow was perhaps a hundred yards wide between the wooded slopes, and it wound away from me and curved to disappear to my right. At the edge of the wooded slopes, where they met open meadow, there were lilac bushes with blossoms several days old. The meadow itself was green and fair with the young chartreuse grass of early summer and the white and purple of the lilacs, and the variform oaks behind the lilacs were fuzzy in outline, with small, new leaves.

  In the middle of all this, in the center of the meadow, were black-clad figures moving about with computing devices, measuring and figuring the possibilities of death from every angle. In the very center of the meadow for some reason they had set up marking stakes-a single stake, then a stake in front of that with two stakes on either side of it, and one more stake in line before these. Farther on was another single stake, down, as if fallen on the grass and discarded.

  I looked back up into the lean young face of the soldier.

  "Getting ready to defeat the Exotics?" I said.

  He took it as if it had been a straightforward question, with no irony in my voice at all.

  "Yes, sir," he said seriously. I looked at him and at the taut skin and clear eyes of the rest.

  "Ever think you might lose?"

  "No, Mr. Olyn." He shook his head solemnly. "No man loses who goes to battle for the Lord." He saw that I needed to be convinced, and he went about it earnestly. "He hath set His hand upon His soldiers. And all that is possible to them is victory-or sometimes death. And what is death?"

  He looked to his fellow soldiers and they all nodded.

  "What is death?" they echoed.

  I looked at them. They stood there asking me and each other what was death as if they were talking about some hard but necessary job.

  I had an answer for them, but I did not say it. Death was a Groupman, one of their own kind, giving orders to soldiers just like themselves to assassinate prisoners. That was death.

  "Call an officer," I said. "My pass lets me through here."

  "I regret, sir," said the one who had been talking to me, "we cannot leave our posts to summon an officer. One will come soon."

  I had a hunch what "soon" meant, and I was right. It was high noon before a Force-Leader came by to order them to chow and let me through.

  As I pulled into Kensie Graeme's Headquarters, the sun was low, patterning the ground with the long shadows of trees. Yet it was as if the camp were just waking up. I did not need experience to see the Exotics were beginning to move at last against Jamethon.

  I found Janol Marat, the New Earth Commandant.

  "I've got to see Field Commander Graeme," I said.

  He shook his head, for all that we now knew each other well.

  "Not now, Tam. I'm sorry."

  "Janol," I said, "this isn't for an interview. It's a matter of life and death. I mean that. I've got to see Kensie."

  He stared at me. I stared back.

  "Wait here," he said. We were standing just inside the headquarters office. He went out and was gone for perhaps five minutes. I stood, listening to the wall clock ticking away. Then he came back.

  "This way," he said.

  He led me outside the back between the bubble roundness of the plastic buildings to a small structure half-hidden in some trees. When we stepped through its front entrance, I realized it was Kensie's personal quarters. We passed through a small sitting room into a combination bedroom and bath. Kensie had just stepped out of the shower and was getting into battle clothes. He looked at me curiously, then turned his gaze back on Janol.

  "All right, Commandant," he said, "you can get back to your duties, now."

  "Sir," said Janol, without looking at me.

  He saluted and left.

  "All right, Tam," Kensie said, pulling on a pair of uniform slacks. "What is it?"

  "I know you're ready to move out," I said.

  He looked at me a little humorously as he locked the waistband of his slacks. He had not yet put on his shirt, and in that relatively small room he loomed like a giant, like some irresistible natural force. His body was tanned like dark wood and the muscles lay in flat bands across his chest and shoulders. His belly was hollow and the cords in his arms came and went as he moved them. Once more I felt the particular, special element of the Dorsai in him. It was not even the fact that he was someone trained from birth to war, someone bred for battle. No, it was something living but untouchable-the same quality of difference to be found in the pure Exotic like Padma the OutBond, or in some Newtonian or Cassidan researchist. Something so much above and beyond the common form of man that it was like a serenity, a sense of conviction where his own type of thing was concerned that was so complete it made him beyond all weaknesses, untouchable, unconquerable.

  I saw the slight, dark shadow of Jamethon in my mind's eye, standing opposed to such a man as this; and the thought of any victory for Jamethon was unthinkable, an impossibility.

  But there was always danger.

  "All right, I'll tell you what I came about," I said to Kensie. "I've just found out Black's been in touch with the Blue Front, a native terrorist political group with its headquarters in Blauvain. Three of them visited him last night. I saw them."

  Kensie picked up his shirt and slid a long arm into one sleeve.

  "I know," he said.

  I stared at him.

  "Don't you understand?" I said. "They're assassins. It's their stock in trade. And the one man they and Jamethon both could use out of the way is you."

  He put his other arm in a sleeve.

  "I know that," he said. "They want the present government here on St. Marie out of the way and themselves in power-which isn't possible with Exotic money hiring us to keep the peace here."

  "They haven't had Jamethon's help."

  "Have they got it now?" he asked, sealing the shirt closure between thumb and forefinger.

  "The Friendlies are desperate," I said. "Even if reinforcements arrived tomorrow, Jamethon knows what his chances are with you ready to move. Assassins may be outlawed by the Conventions of War and the Mercenaries' Code, but you and I know the Friendlies."

  Kensie looked at me oddly and picked up his jacket.

  "Do we?" he said.

  I met his eyes. "Don't we?"

  "Tam." He put on the jacket and closed it. "I know the men I have to fight. It's my business to know. But what makes you think you know them?"

  "They're my business, too," I said. "Maybe you’ve forgotten. I'm a Newsman. People are my business, first, last and always."

  "But you’ve got no use for the Friendlies."

  "Should I?" I said. "I've been on all the worlds. I've seen the Cetan entrepreneur-and he wants his margin, but he's a human being. I've seen the Newtonian and the Venusian with their heads in the clouds, but if you yanked on their sleeves hard enough, you could pull them back to reality. I’ve seen Exotics like Padma at their mental parlor tricks, and the Freilander up to his ears in his own red tape. I’ve seen them from my own world of Old Earth, and Coby, and Venus and even from the Dorsai, like you. And I tell you they’ve all got one thing in common. Underneath it all they're human. Every one of them's human-they’ve just specialized in some one, valuable way."

  "And the Friendlies haven't?"

  "Fanaticism," I said. "Is that valuable? It's just the opposite. What's good, what's even permissible about blind, deaf, dumb, unthinking faith that doesn't let a man reason for himself?"

  "How do you know they don't reason?" Kensie asked. He was standing facing me now.

  "Maybe some of them do," I said. "Maybe the young ones, before the poison's had time to work in. What good does that do, as long as the culture exists?''

  A sudden silence came into the room.

  "What are you talking about?" said Kensie.

  "I mean you want the assassins," I said. "You don't want the Friendly troops. Prove that Jamethon Black has broken the Conventions of War by arranging with them to kill you; and you can win St. Mar
ie for the Exotics without firing a shot."

  "And how would I do that?"

  "Use me," I said. "I’ve got a pipeline to the political group the assassins represent. Let me go to them as your representative and outbid Jamethon. You can offer them recognition by the present government now. Padma and the present St. Marie government heads would have to back you up if you could clean the planet of Friendlies that easily."

  He looked at me with no expression at all.

  "And what would I be supposed to buy with this?" he said.

  "Sworn testimony they'd been hired to assassinate you. As many of them as needed could testify."

  "No Court of Interplanetary Inquiry would believe people like that," Kensie said.

  "Ah," I said, and I could not help smiling. "But they'd believe me as a News Service Representative when I backed up every word that was said."

  There was a new silence. His face had no expression at all.

  "I see," he said.

  He walked past me into the salon. I followed him. He went to his phone, put his finger on a stud and spoke into an imageless gray screen.

  "Janol," he said.

  He turned away from the screen, crossed the room to an arms cabinet and began putting on his battle harness. He moved deliberately and neither looked nor spoke in my direction. After a few long minutes, the building entrance slid aside and Janol stepped in.

  "Sir?" said the officer.

  "Mr. Olyn stays here until further orders."

  "Yes, sir," said Janol.

  Graeme went out.

  I stood numb, staring at the entrance through which he had left. I could not believe that he would violate the Conventions so far himself as not only to disregard me, but to put me essentially under arrest to keep me from doing anything further about the situation.

  I turned to Janol. He was looking at me with a sort of wry sympathy on his long, brown face.

  "Is the OutBond here in camp?" I asked him.

  "No." He came up to me. "He's back in the Exotic Embassy in Blauvain. Be a good fella now and sit down, why don't you? We might as well kill the next few hours pleasantly.”

  We were standing face to face; I hit him in the stomach.

  I had done a little boxing as an undergraduate on the college level. I mention this not to make myself out a sort of muscular hero, but to explain why I had sense enough not to try for his jaw. Graeme could probably have found the knockout point there without even thinking, but I was no Dorsai. The area below a man's breastbone is relatively large, soft, handy and generally just fine for amateurs. And I did know something about how to punch.

  For all that, Janol was not knocked out. He went over on the floor and lay there doubled up with his eyes still open. But he was not ready to get up right away. I turned and went quickly out of the building.

  The camp was busy. Nobody stopped me. I got back into my car, and five minutes later I was free on the darkening road for Blauvain.

  Chapter 26

  From New San Marcos to Blauvain and Padma's Embassy was fourteen hundred kilometers. I should have made it in six hours, but a bridge was washed out and I took fourteen.

  It was after eight the following morning when I burst into the half-park, half-building that was the embassy.

  "Padma," I said. "Is he still-"

  "Yes, Mr. Olyn," said the girl receptionist. "He's expecting you."

  She smiled above her blue robe. I did not mind. I was too busy being glad Padma had not already taken off for the fringe areas of the conflict.

  She took me down and around a corner and turned me over to a young male Exotic, who introduced himself as one of Padma's secretaries. He took me a short distance and introduced me to another secretary, a middle-aged man this time, who led me through several rooms and then directed me down a long corridor and around a corner, beyond which he said was the entrance to the office area where Padma worked at the moment. Then he left me.

  I followed his direction. But when I stepped through that entrance it was not into a room, but into another short corridor. And I stopped dead. For what I suddenly thought I saw coming at me was Kensie Graeme-Kensie with murder on his mind.

  But the man who looked like Kensie merely glanced at me and dismissed me, continuing to come on. Then I knew.

  Of course, he was not Kensie. He was Kensie's twin brother, Ian, Commander of Garrison Forces for the Exotics here in Blauvain. He strode toward me; and I began once more to walk toward him, but the shock stayed with me until we had passed one another.

  I do not think anyone could have come on him like that, in my position, and not been hit the same way. From Janol, at diiferent times, I had gathered how Ian was the converse of Kensie. Not in a military sense-they were both magnificent specimens of Dorsai officers-but in the matter of their individual natures.

  Kensie had had a profound effect on me from the first moment, with his cheerful nature and the warmth of being that at times obscured the very fact that he was Dorsai. When the pressure of military affairs was not directly on him he seemed all sunshine; you could warm yourself in his presence as you might in the sun. Ian, his physical duplicate, striding toward me like some two-eyed Odin, was all shadow.

  Here at last was the Dorsal legend come to life. Here was the grim man with the iron heart and the dark and solitary soul. In the powerful fortress of his body, what was essentially Ian dwelt as isolated as a hermit on a mountain. He was the fierce and lonely Highlandman of his distant ancestry, come to life again.

  Not law, not ethics, but the trust of the given word, clan-loyalty and the duty of the blood feud held sway in Ian. He was a man who would cross hell to pay a debt for good or ill; and in that moment when I saw him coming toward me and recognized him at last, I suddenly thanked whatever gods were left that he had no debt with me.

  Then we had passed each other, and he was gone around a corner.

  Rumor had it, I remembered, that the blackness around him never lightened except in Kensie's presence, that he was truly his twin brother's other half. And that if he should ever lose the light that Kensie's bright presence shed on him, he would be doomed to his own lightlessness forever.

  It was a statement I was to remember at a later time, as I was to remember seeing him come toward me in that moment.

  But now I forgot him as I went forward through another entrance into what looked like a small conservatory and saw the gentle face and short-cropped white hair of Padma above his blue robe.

  "Come in, Mr. Olyn," he said, getting up, "and come along with me."

  He turned and walked out through an archway of purple clematis blooms. I followed him, and found a small courtyard all but filled with the elliptical shape of a sedan air-car. Padma was already climbing into one of the seats facing the controls. He held the door for me.

  "Where are we going?" I asked as I got in.

  He touched the autopilot panel; the ship rose in the air. He left it to its own navigation and pivoted his chair about to face me.

  "To Commander Graeme's headquarters in the field," he answered.

  His eyes were the same light hazel color, but they seemed to catch and swim with the sunlight striking through the transparent top of the air-car as we reached altitude and began to move horizontally. I could not read them or the expression on his face.

  "I see," I said. "Of course, I know a call from Graeme's HQ could get to you much faster than I could by ground-car from the same spot. But I hope you aren't thinking of having him kidnap me or something like that. I have Credentials of Impartiality protecting me as a Newsman, as well as authorizations from both the Friendly and the Exotic worlds. And I don't intend to be held responsible for any conclusions drawn by Graeme after the conversation the two of us had earlier this morning-alone."

  Padma sat still in his air-car seat, facing me. His hands were folded in his lap together, pale against the blue robe, but with strong sinews showing under the skin of their backs.

  "You're coming with me now by my decision, not Kensie
Graeme's."

  "I want to know why," I said tensely. "Because," he said slowly, "you are very dangerous." And he sat still, looking at me with unwavering eyes.

  I waited for him to go on, but he did not. "Dangerous?" I said. "Dangerous to whom?"

  "To the future of all of us."

  I stared at him, then I laughed. I was angry.

  "Cut it out!" I said.

  He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving my face. I was baffled by those eyes. Innocent and open as a child's, but I could not see through them into the man himself.

  "All right," I said. "Tell me, why am I dangerous?“

  "Because you want to destroy a vital part of the human race. And you know how."

  There was a short silence. The air-car fled on through the skies without a sound.

  "Now that's an odd notion," I said slowly and calmly. "I wonder where you got it?"

  "From our ontogenetic calculations," said Padma as calmly as I had spoken. "And it's not a notion, Tam. As you know yourself."

  "Oh, yes," I said. "Ontogenetics. I was going to look that up."

  "You did look it up, didn't you, Tam?"

  "Did I?" I said. "I guess I did, at that. It didn't seem very clear to me, though, as I remember. Something about evolution."

  "Ontogenetics," said Padma, "is the study of the effect of evolution upon the interacting forces of human society.''

  "Am I an interacting force?"

  "At the moment and for the past several years, yes," said Padma. "And possibly for some years into the future. But possibly not."

  "That sounds almost like a threat."

  "In a sense it is." Padma's eyes caught the light as I watched them. "You're capable of destroying yourself as well as others."

  "I'd hate to do that."

  "Then," said Padma, "you'd better listen to me."

  "Why, of course," I said. "That's my business, listening. Tell me all about Ontogenetics-and myself."

  He made an adjustment in the controls, then swung his seat back to face mine once more.

  "The human race," said Padma, "broke up in an evolutionary explosion at the moment in history when interstellar colonization became practical." He sat watching me. I kept my face attentive. "This happened for reasons stemming from racial instinct which we haven't completely charted yet, but which was essentially self-protective in nature."