The Tactics Of Mistake

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Her eyes widened slightly. A look of uncertainty crept into them. "Go ahead?" she echoed. "Cletus, haven't you been up to the house? I thought you said you'd already talked to Dad."

  "I have," he said.

  "Then … " She stared at him. "Cletus, didn't you understand what he said? I told him—it's wrong. It's just wrong. I don't know what's wrong about it, but something is. I'm not going to marry you!"

  Cletus looked at her. And, as she gazed back at him, Melissa's face changed. There crept into her face that expression that Cletus had seen her wear only once before. It was the look he had seen on her face after he had emerged alive from the ditch in which he had played dead in order to destroy with the dally gun the Neulander guerrillas who had attacked their armored car on its way into Bakhalla.

  "You don't … you can't think," she began, barely above a whisper. But then her voice firmed. "You can force me to marry you?"

  "We'll hold the ceremony," he said.

  She shook her head, disbelievingly. "No Dorsai chaplain would marry me against my will!"

  "My regimental chaplain will—if I order it," Cletus said.

  "Marry the daughter of Eachan Khan?" she blazed, suddenly. "And I suppose my father's simply going to stand still and watch this happen?"

  "I hope so—sincerely," answered Cletus, with such a slow and meaningful emphasis on the words that color leaped into her face for a second and then drained away to leave her as pale as a woman in shock.

  "You … " Her voice faltered and stopped. Child of a mercenary officer, she could not have failed to notice that, among those present for the wedding, those bound to Cletus by emotional or other ties outnumbered those bound to her father by two to one. But her eyes on him were still incredulous. They searched his face for some indication that what she saw there was somehow not the true Cletus.

  "But you're not like that. You wouldn't … " Her voice failed again. "Dad's your friend!"

  "And you're going to be my wife," Cletus answered.

  Her eyes fell for the first time to the sidearm in the uncapped holster at his waist.

  "Oh, God!" She put a slim hand to each side of her face. "And I thought Dow was cruel—I won't answer. When the chaplain asks me if I'll take you for my husband, I'll say no!"

  "For Eachan's sake," said Cletus, "I hope not."

  Her hands fell from her face. She stood like a sleepwalker, with her arms at her sides.

  Cletus stepped up to her, took her arm and led her, unresisting, out of the summer house up through the garden, through a hedge and back in through the french doors to the dining room. Eachan was still there, and he turned to face them quickly as they came in, putting down the glass he held and stepping quickly forward to meet them.

  "Here you are!" he said. His gaze sharpened suddenly on his daughter. "Melly! What's the matter?"

  "Nothing," Cletus answered. "There's no problem, after all. We're going to get married."

  Eachan's gaze switched sharply to Cletus. "You are?" His eyes locked with Cletus' for a second, then went back to Melissa. "Is this right, Melly? Is everything all right?"

  "Everything's fine," said Cletus. "You'd better tell the chaplain we're ready now."

  Eachan did not move. His eyes raked downward and stared deliberately at the weapon in its holster on Cletus' hip. He looked back up at Cletus, and then at Melissa.

  "I'm waiting to hear from you, Melly," Eachan said slowly. His eyes were as gray as weathered granite. "You haven't told me yet that everything's all right."

  "It's all right," she said between stiff, colorless lips. "It was your idea I marry Cletus in the first place, wasn't it, Dad?"

  "Yes," said Eachan. There was no noticeable change in his expression, but all at once a change seemed to pass over him, sweeping away all emotion and leaving him quiet, settled and purposeful. He took a step forward, so that he stood now almost between them, looking directly up into Cletus' face from a few inches away. "But perhaps I was making a mistake."

  His right hand dropped, seemingly in a casual way, to cover Cletus' hand where it held Melissa's wrist. His fingers curled lightly about Cletus' thumb in a grip that could be used to break the thumb if Cletus did not release his hold.

  Cletus dropped his other hand lightly upon the belt of the weapon at his side.

  "Let go," he said softly to Eachan.

  The same deadly quietness held them both. For a second there was no movement in the room, and then Melissa gasped.

  "No!" She forced herself between them, facing her father, her back toward Cletus, his hand still holding her wrist, now behind her back. "Dad! What's the matter with you? I'd think you'd be happy we've decided to get married after all!"

  Behind her, Cletus let go of her wrist and she brought the formerly imprisoned arm around before her. Her shoulders lifted sharply with the depth of her breathing. For a moment Eachan stared at her blankly, and then a little touch of puzzlement and dismay crept into his eyes.

  "Melly, I thought … " His voice stumbled and fell silent.

  "Thought?" cried Melissa, sharply. "What, Dad?"

  He stared at her, distractedly. "I don't know!" he exploded, all at once. "I don't understand you, girl! I don't understand you at all."

  He turned away and stamped back to the table where he had put his drink down. He picked it up and swallowed heavily from it.

  Melissa went to him and for a second put her arm around his shoulders, laying her head against the side of his head. Then she turned back to Cletus and placed a cold hand on his wrist. She looked at him with eyes that were strangely deep and free of anger or resentment.

  "Come along, then, Cletus," she said, quietly. "We'd better be getting started."

  It was some hours later before they were able to be alone together. The wedding guests had seen them to the door of the master bedroom in newly built Grahame House, and it was only when the door was shut in their faces that they finally left the building, the echo of their laughter and cheerful voices fading behind them.

  Wearily, Melissa dropped into a sitting position on the edge of the large bed. She looked up at Cletus, who was still standing.

  "Now, will you tell me what's wrong?" she asked.

  He looked at her. The moment he had foreseen when he had asked her to marry him was upon him now. He summoned up courage to face it.

  "It'll be a marriage in name only," he said. "In a couple of years you can get an annulment."

  "Then why marry me at all?" she said, her voice still empty of blame or rancor.

  "DeCastries will be back out among the new worlds within another twelve months," he said. "Before he came, he'd be asking you to come to Earth. With your marriage to me, you lost your Earth citizenship. You're a Dorsai, now. You can't go—until you've had the marriage annulled and reapplied for Earth citizenship. And you can't annul the marriage right away without letting Eachan know I forced you to marry me—with the results you know, the same results you agreed to marry me to avoid, right now."

  "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.

&
nbsp; 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'.

  "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 fore
st 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."