The Tactics Of Mistake

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "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' 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' 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' 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' 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' 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.

  Some of them stood up in their seats, ready to step down into the field and congratulate Cletus as he tottered toward the conclusion of the tenth mile, which seemed obviously
intended to be the end of the race. "Just a minute, please, gentlemen," Eachan Khan said. "If you'll hold your seats a little longer … "

  He turned and nodded to Cletus, who was now passing the ten-mile mark directly in front of the viewers. Cletus nodded and kept on going.

  Then, to the utter astonishment of the watchers, a remarkable thing happened. As Cletus continued around the track, his step became firmer and his breathing eased. He did not immediately pick up speed, but his pulse rate, as shown on the viewing screen, began slowly to fall.

  At first it went down by ragged steps, dropping a few beats, holding firm, then dropping a few more. But as he continued, it began to drop more steadily. By the time he was back around in front of the watching officers, his pulse rate was again 150.

  And his speed began to pick up. It did not pick up much; he gained back to just under six miles an hour. But he held steady at that pace, continuing to circle the track.

  He ran six more laps of the track—three miles—and at the end of the third mile his speed and pulse rate were still constant. At the end of that additional third mile he stopped running, walked a lap without any sign of unusual distress, and ended up in front of the watching group, breathing normally and hardly perspiring, with his pulse in the low seventies.

  "That's it, gentlemen," he said, addressing them all. "Now I'm going to have to take a few moments to clean up, and the rest of you may adjourn to Eachan's house, where we'll be able to talk in more comfort and privacy. I'll join you there in about twenty minutes, and I'll leave you now to consider what you've just seen without any further explanation, except that what you've just seen me do, did in fact, exact a penalty upon my bodily reserves greater than that ordinarily demanded by exertion. However, as you see, it was possible and practical, at that price."

  He turned away toward the dressing room at the near end of the stadium. The spectators moved outside to an airbus rented by Eachan, and were flown out to Eachan's house, where the window wall along one side of the long living room had been opened up so that the living room and the patio outside became one large gathering space. Food and drink had been provided, and there, a little later, Cletus joined them.

  "As you know," he said, standing facing them as they sat in a rough semicircle in chairs about him, "all of you here were officers we invited because I hoped you might be interested in joining me in forming an entirely new military unit, a military unit I intend to command, and which would pay its officers and men only subsistence during a training period of some months, but which would thereafter pay them at least double the rate they had been receiving as mercenaries up until this time. It goes without saying that I want the cream of the crop, and that I expect that cream of the crop to invest not merely their time but their wholehearted enthusiasm in this new type of organization I have in mind."

  He paused. "That was one of the reasons for the demonstration you've just seen," he said. "What you saw, in the crudest terms, was a demonstration in which I was at least half again as physically effective as my bodily energy level and conditioning would allow me to be. In short, I've just given you an example of how a man can make himself into a man and a half."

  He paused again, and this tune he raked his eyes over every face in the audience before he continued.

  "I am going to expect," he said, slowly and emphatically, "every enlisted man and officer in this military unit I'm forming to be able to multiply himself to at least that extent by the time he's finished training. This is a first prerequisite, gentlemen, to anyone wishing to join me in this venture."

  He smiled, unexpectedly. "And now, relax and enjoy yourselves. Stroll around the place, look at my homemade training equipment, and ask as many questions as you like of Eachan, Melissa Khan or myself. We'll have another meeting out here in a few days time for those of you who have decided to join us. That's all."

  He stepped away from the center of their attention and made his way to the buffet tables where the food and drink had been set up. The gathering broke up into small groups and the hum of voices arose. By late afternoon most of the visitors had left, some twenty-six of them having pledged their services to Cletus before leaving. A somewhat large number had promised to think it over and get in touch with him within the next two days. There remained a small group of those who had already pledged themselves to Cletus before the demonstration, and these met in the once more enclosed living room after dinner for a private conference.

  Present were Arvid, now recovered from his shoulder wound, Major Swahili and Major David Ap Morgan, whose family was also a Foralie neighbor. Eachan's other officers were still back in Bakhalla commanding the force of Dorsais that remained there in Exotic pay to guard the colony, now that the Alliance had withdrawn its troops under Bat Traynor. Bat's misgivings about leaving had not been shared by Alliance HQ back on Earth, which had been overjoyed to free nearly half a division of men to reinforce its hard-pressed military commitments on half a dozen other new worlds. In addition to Arvid, Ap Morgan, Swahili and Eachan, himself, were two old friends of Eachan's—a Colonel Lederle Dark and a Brigadier General Tosca Aras. Dark was a thin, bald man who seemed to be all bone and long muscle under a somewhat dandified exterior. Tosca Aras was a small, neat, clean-shaven man with washed-out blue eyes and a gaze as steady as an aimed field rifle in its gun mount.

  "By the end of the week," Cletus said to them all, "anyone who hasn't made up his mind to join us won't be worth having. From those I talked to today, I estimate we'll get perhaps fifty good officers, perhaps ten of which we'll lose in training. So there's no point in wasting time. We can start setting up a table of organization and a training schedule. We'll train the officers, and they can train their men afterward."

  "Who's to be in charge of the extra energy training?" asked Lederle Dark.

  "I'll have to be, to begin with," Cletus answered him, "Right now there's nobody else. And all of you will have to join the other officers in my classes on that. The rest of it you can all handle by yourselves—it's simply a matter of running them through the physical and practicing standard field problems, but from the viewpoint of the new organizational setup."

  "Sir," said Arvid, "excuse me, but I still don't seem to really understand why we need to shake up the whole table of organization—unless you want it different just so the men in this outfit will feel that much more different."

  "No—though the feeling of difference isn't going to do us any harm," Cletus said. "I should have gone into this with all of you before now. The plain fact of the matter is that a military body structured into squads, platoons, companies, battalions and so on is designed to fight the type of war that used to be common but which we aren't going to be encountering out here on the new worlds. Our fighting units are going to bear more resemblance to a group of athletes in a team sport than they are to the old type of fighting unit. The tactics they're going to be using—my tactics—aren't designed for structured armies in solid confrontation with each other. Instead, they're designed to be useful to what seems to be a loose group of almost independently acting units, the efforts of which are coordinated not so much by a hierarchy of command as by the fact that, like good members of a team, they're familiar with each other and can anticipate what their teammates will do in response to their own actions and the general situation."

  Cletus paused and looked around him. "Are there any of the rest of you who don't understand that?" he asked.

  Eachan cleared his throat. "We all understand what you say, Cletus," he said. "But what the words are going to mean when they're turned into battle units is something we've got to see before it'll make much sense. Here you cut the squad to six men—and that's divided into two teams of three men each. You make four squads to a group, with a senior or junior groupman in charge, and two groups make up a force. It's plain enough, but how's anyone going to know how it'll work until they see it in practice?"

  "They aren't. You aren't—of course," answered Cletus. "But what you can do now is absorb the theory of
it, and the reasoning behind the theory. Shall I go over it again?"

  There was a moment of silence.

  "Probably better," said Eachan.

  "All right then," said Cletus. "As I think I've told you all, the basic principle is that, from the individual right up to the largest organizations within the total Dorsai military command, each unit should be capable of reacting like a single member of a team made up of other members equal in size and importance to himself. That is, any one of the three soldiers in any given half squad should be able to operate in perfect unison with the other two members of his team with no more communication than a few code words or signals that would cue the others to standard actions or responses to any given situation. Similarly, the two teams in any squad should be able to work as partners with no more than a few code words or signals. Likewise, the four squads should be able to operate as a team in the group with each squad knowing its role in any one of a hundred or more group actions identifiable by code word or signal. Just as the two groups must be able to react together almost instinctively as a single command, the commandant of which should likewise be trained to react in pattern with the commandants of the commands with which he is associated."

  Cletus stopped talking. Once more there was the small silence.

  "You say you'll supply the patterns?" Tosca Aras said. "I mean you'll work out all these team actions that are triggered by code words and signals and so forth?"

  "I already have them worked out," said Cletus.

  "You have?" Aras' voice teetered on the edge of incredulity. "There must be thousands of them."

  Cletus shook his head. "Something over twenty-three thousand, to be exact," he said. "But I think you may be missing the point. The actions of a team are included within the actions of the squad, just as the actions of the squad are included within the actions of the group. In short, it's like a language with twenty-three thousand words. There are innumerable combinations, but there's also a logical structure. Once you master the structure, then the choice of words within the sentence is severely restricted. In fact, there's only one ideal choice."