"You were going to say something about the Moscow Treaties before, weren't you?" I prompted.
"Nope." He headed for the jeep.
I flexed my arms. The harness was stiff, but it wasn't uncomfortable. I guess Shorty knew what he was doing.
He came back with the tanks. They sloshed lightly. "They're only half full. I don't want you starting any forest fires. Turn around."
As he hung the tanks on my shoulders, he said, "You want to know about the treaties? They were dishonorable. To make false rules about `I won't use this if you won't use that' may seem civilized because it lessens the brutality-but it isn't. It just makes the brutality tolerable for a longer time. And that's not civilized at all. If we're in a situation where we have to stop the other fellow, then let's just stop him. It's more efficient. There, how does that feel?"
I tested my balance. "Uh, fine-"
He scowled. "No, it isn't. You're off balance. They're too low. Hold still." He lifted the tanks off my back and began readjusting the straps of the harness. "This torch-" he said, "-this torch is a truly beautiful weapon. It has a maximum range of sixty meters. Eighty with a supercharger. It makes you a totally independent fighting unit. You carry your own fuel, you choose your own targets, point and squeeze. Vrr-o-oomm! It'll stop a man instantly-or a worm. It'll stop a tank. It'll burn out a pillbox. There isn't anything that can resist a torch-except very thick armor or a lot of distance. It is not"-he gave a hard yank-"humane. You pull that trigger and that's not a man in front of you anymore; it's a private piece of hell. You can watch him turn black and shrivel as his blood boils out of his skin. You can feel his flesh roasting. Sometimes you can even hear the scream of the air exploding out of his lungs." He gave another sharp pull at the straps. "And that's good, Jim, that's very good. You should be right down there next to what you're doing. If you're going to be a killer, you should do it personally, so you experience what you're doing. That's the civilized way." He poked me. "That torch is not humane, but it is civilized."
My mouth was very dry. I managed to say, "Civilized-?"
"It stops them, doesn't it? Hold still, here come the tanks again. A weapon should let you sleep well at night. If it doesn't, there's something wrong with the war."
He caught me unprepared. I almost staggered. I stiffened against the weight. But he was right. The balance was better this way.
He must have seen the look on my face. "Jim-war isn't polite. Especially not this one. We don't have the time to be fair. That torch will burn a Chtorran like fluff, and that's all that matters -you don't get a second chance with worms. They come at you at a good sixty-five kilometers an hour-two hundred and twenty-five kilograms of angry worm. And they're all teeth at the business end. If it's purple, burn it. That's a standing order. You don't have to wait for permission."
"I won't."
He locked eyes with me and nodded sharply; his expression was hard. "There's one more thing. Don't ever balk because you might hit a man. Don't hesitate because you think you might be able to save him-you can't. Once a Chtorran starts eating, there's no way to stop it. It can't stop. Not even if it wanted to. Burn them both, Jim. And burn them fast. He'd thank you for it if he could." He studied my face. "Can you remember that?"
"I'll try."
"It's like that little girl. It's the kindest thing you can do."
I nodded and shouldered the flamethrower. I didn't like it; I probably never would. Too bad. "Okay," my mouth was saying. "Show me how to work it."
SIX
RECONNAISSANCE CONFIRMED that there were only three worms in the valley, as Duke had guessed, but also that they were very busy with something. When Larry reported that, Duke frowned. He didn't like worms being so active-that made them hungry.
Dr. Obama ordered satellite pictures and the USAF ROCKY MOUNTAIN EYEBALL sent us a full-spectrum series, a twelvehour surveillance of the valley and surrounding regions. The frames started arriving within an hour of Dr. Obama's request.
We all studied them, particularly the infra-red ones, but they told us little we didn't already know.
"Look here," said Larry, "the igloo." It was a bright red blotch; the frame was pseudo-color enhanced to show heat sources. "Something very hot in there. They must be large."
"And very active," grunted Duke. "That's almost too much heat." He poked Shorty. "What do you think? How much mass are we looking at?"
Shorty shrugged. "Hard to say. Three tons at least. Probably more. The resolution on the infra-red is lousy. The wavelength's too long."
"Yeah," said Duke. "I guess that settles it. We'll take three teams."
We left just before dawn. Chtorrans don't like direct sunlight, so we figured to drive all morning and catch them in the hottest part of the day, when they were most likely to be torpid. We hoped.
There were twelve of us. Four men with torches, three with grenades and two with rocket launchers. And the three jeep drivers would be carrying laser-sighted AM-280s. The 280 was recoilless and could fire twenty-three hundred rounds per minute. A mere touch on the trigger would put fifty rounds inside a seven-centimeter circle-whatever the target beam touched. You could shoot from the hip and aim it like a flashlight. The 280 could chew holes in a brick wall-it was the high volume of fire that did it. If any gun could stop a Chtorran, it would have to be the 280.
I'd heard only a single complaint about the guns-from Shorty, of course. Denver had sent up some specially loaded magazines for them. Every hundredth round was a needle dart packed with a variety of particularly nasty germs. The reasoning was that if we failed to kill the Chtorrans right away, the bugs might get them later. Shorty had snorted contemptuously. "It's in case we don't come back. That's how much faith they have in us." He looked at me. "Listen, boy-that's not the way we do it here. We plan on coming back. Got that?"
"Uh ... yes, sir."
The Remington hadn't been that hard to master. I'd spent the first couple of days starting forest fires-clearing brush and widening the scorched area around the camp; then had switched to target practice-trying to burn an asbestoid-and-wire framework dragged behind a jeep.
"Now, be careful," Shorty had warned. "If you fire too soon, the Chtorran will veer off-but you won't be able to see that until the smoke clears. By then it's too late. Wait as long as you can before firing."
"Until I see the whites of his eyes, huh?"
Shorty grinned as he got back into the jeep. "Sonny, if you get close enough to a worm to see the whites of his eyes-you're lunch." He drove off and began his run.
I missed, of course. I waited too long and nearly got knocked down by the cage.
Shorty braked to a stop, stood up in the jeep and rang a big triangular dinner bell. "Come and get it, Chtorrans! Dinner is served! Nice fresh human-not dangerous at all! Come and get it!"
I waited till he was through. "I assume that means I was too slow."
"Too slow-? Of course not. You just move too long in the same place."
We tried again. This time he drove straight at me. The jeep bounced across the field, the asbestoid worm in hot pursuit but never quite catching up. I planted my feet solidly and counted slowly. Not too soon, now...
I missed again.
This time Shorty got out of the jeep and strode back to the target. He pulled a fifty-casey note out of his pocket and stapled it to the cage. "There," he said. "I'm betting fifty C's that you can't hit it." He started back to the jeep. "You know, you really ought to learn how to run faster. Make the worms earn their lunch. We don't want any fat Chtorrans on this planet, do we?"
"We don't want any at all," I said.
"That's the idea," he grinned. "I thought you forgot. Want to try it again?"
"Yeah. This time I'll get it."
He hooked a thumb at the target. "I've got fifty caseys says you won't-prove me wrong." He gunned the engine and jolted off. While he circled, I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong. Obviously I was waiting too long to fire-but Shorty had said not to fire too soon or the
Chtorran would have time to veer off.
On the other hand, if I held off too long I might not get the chance to fire at all.
Hmm. The best time to shoot had to be at just that moment when it was too late for the Chtorran to change course. But when was that? How close did a Chtorran get before the bloodlust took over? Fifty meters? Twenty-five? Hmm, think of a stampeding elephant. Call it fifteen meters....
Hey, wait a minute-! This torch had a range of almost seventy. What was Shorty trying to pull? I could burn worms long before they got close enough to chomp me!
I waved at him and tried to attract his attention, but he only grinned and waved back. He started heading toward me. Fast. He was beginning another run.
Well, I'd show him. I reset the range of the flamer to maximum. This time I'd fire as soon as the target got close enough. I wouldn't wait one second longer than necessary.
I focused on the wire-mesh worm, estimated its range, waited till it bounced across an invisible line and squeezed the release. The flame whooshed out with a roar, startling me with its intensity. The asbestoid worm disappeared in a ball of orange fire. Oily black smoke rose from it.
Shorty leapt from the jeep, howling. I cut off the torch hastily. But he wasn't mad at all about his fifty caseys-not even angry about his singed eyebrows. He just ran over and pulled the plug on my battery pack.
"Now you're thinking like a worm-burner," he said. "Fire as soon as they get within range."
I glowered at him. "Why didn't you tell me that in the first place?"
"What-? And let you miss the excitement of learning how to outthink a Chtorran? That's what the lesson was all about."
"Oh," I said. Then, "Can we try it again?"
"Uh, I think not." He was feeling the damage to his eyebrows. "At least not until I get a longer towline for that target."
We never did get the longer towline, what with preparations for the big burn and all, but it worked out all right anyway. A couple more days of shooting at the target-Shorty wore his asbestoid pajamas-and I was ready for the real thing. At least Shorty and Duke were willing to take the chance. I wasn't as sure. I'd heard that worms could be as long as four meters and weigh as much as nine hundred kilos. Or more. Maybe those were exaggerations-I'd find out for myself soon enough-but I'd been brought up to worry.
It's a family tradition. Good worrying is never wasted.
Well, I'd certainly done enough this time-and just in case I hadn't, I was doing a little extra in the jeep. Just to be on the safe side.
Duke noticed it, of course. We were both in the second car. "Relax, Jim. It's not white-knuckle time yet."
"Sorry," I said, trying to grin.
"We won't be there for hours." He leaned back against the seat and stretched his arms. "Enjoy the morning. Look at the scenery."
"Uh, shouldn't we be on the lookout for worms?"
"We are."
"Huh?"
"Shorty's in the first jeep. Louis and Larry are in the last one. You don't know what to look for-that's why you're in the second. And I have more important things to think about." He folded his arms behind his head and appeared to go to sleep.
"Oh," I said.
I was beginning to get it. In this man's army, you don't worry unless you're ordered to-and if I want you to have an opinion, I'll give you one.
In other words, this was not the army I had thought I was joining-the Teamwork Army. That was dead and gone. I don't know why I hadn't realized. This was something else altogether.
SEVEN
WHITLAW TALKED about the army once.
One of the girls-one of the older ones; her name was Patricia-had been complaining about how her draft board had rejected her choice of "needed skill." (Well, Creative Anarchist had been pretty far out. I couldn't blame them.) "I might as well join the army and be a whore," she said.
"Mmm," said Whitlaw. "With an attitude like that, you probably wouldn't be a very good one."
The class laughed, but she looked miffed. Insulted, even. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean, you might not be acceptable to them. Morale is very important in the army these days."
"Morale-?" The girl seemed astonished. "They're only a bunch of sweat-pushers-! What about my morale? I'm a political scientist!"
"Not in here, you're not." Whitlaw sat down on the edge of his desk, folded his arms and grinned. "And, obviously, not to your draft board either. Maybe a little honest sweat is exactly what you need to appreciate its value."
She sniffed proudly. "But my work with my brain is much more valuable than their work with their bodies."
"Wrong," said Whitlaw. "Your work is valuable only when it's needed. And you're only valuable when your particular skill is scarce. It takes time to train a biological engineer or a quantum mechanic or even a competent AI hacker-but if we had a hundred thousand of them, how much do you think a single one would be worth?"
She didn't answer.
"The only reason we haven't trained that many is that we don't need them. If we did, our society could produce them in two to four years. We've proven that time and again. Your grandfathers proved it when they needed computer programmers and engineers and aerospace technicians and a thousand other specialties to put the first man on the moon-and most of those specialties had to be invented as the needs arose. By the end of the decade, it seemed as if they were as plentiful as sweat-pushers; in fact, some of them actually had to start pushing sweat to survive when the space program was cut back."
"But that was . . . just economics," she insisted. "It's the education that makes a person valuable, isn't it?"
"Is it?" Whitlaw looked at her blandly. "How do you define value? Can you fell a tree? Or milk a cow? Do you know how to operate a bulldozer? Can you lay bricks?"
"Of course not-"
"Then by some standards, you're not valuable at all. You're not a survivor type."
"But-that's manual labor! Anybody can do that."
Whitlaw blinked. "But you can't?"
She looked surprised. "Why should I have to?"
Whitlaw stopped. He eyed her curiously. "Haven't you read any of the assignments?"
"Of course I have, but I'm talking about the real world now." Whitlaw stopped in mid-turn toward his podium. He looked back at her, a startled expression on his face. "I beg your pardon." The class groaned-uh oh-we knew what was coming.
He waited until her mouth ran out of momentum. "Let me explain something to you. In the whole history of the human race, in all the time since we first climbed down out of the trees and stopped being monkeys and started learning how to be people, in all those years, we have managed to maintain what passes for modern civilization for only a very short period. I mark the beginning of modern times with the first industrialization of electricity. That makes the-ah, you should pardon the expression-current era less than two centuries long. That's not a long enough test. So it still isn't proven that civilization isn't a fad. I'm betting on history-it's got the track record. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? What you think of as the real world is actually a very unreal world, an artificial environment that has come into existence only by the determination of a lot of sweat-pushers looking for a way to make their lives easier, and by the good will of the universe-and the latter condition is subject to change without notice. That alone guarantees that this "-he lifted his hands wide to take in the room, the building, the city, the world -"is just a temporary condition. Certainly on a cosmic scale it is." He brushed his white hair back with one hand. There was fire in his voice as he added, "Listen, you're capable-that's not the question. You just refuse to acknowledge your own capabilityand that's your problem. Did you know that in the Soviet Union today there are more women bricklayers than men? And it's been that way for at least fifty years. No, your only excuse is that you're not trained for it. And that's also the reason why you wouldn't be a good whore-you don't know how to be. But you could be, if you had the training. The fact is, you can be anything you choose if
you have the training-and you would if it meant the difference between eating or starving."
"I'm sure I could," she said. "I could learn to milk a cow, if I had to-"
"I'm sure you could too. It'd only take a few minutes." He eyed her. "Or longer."
"-but then what?"
"Then you'd milk cows, of course!"
"But I don't want to milk cows!"
"Neither do I-but if the cow has to be milked, someone has to do it! That's what makes it a needed skill. Listen-" He turned to the rest of us now. "Too many of you sitting in this classroom have been separated from those very necessary skills for too many generations. It's given you some very peculiar ideas of your own importance. Let me relieve you of that foolishness right nowmost of you have to depend on too many others for your survival, and that makes you vulnerable. It wouldn't be a bad idea to learn a few of those basic skills, because as far as the society you live in is concerned, it's the training that's valuable, not the individual.
"Right now, most of our laborers in the army take a lot of pride in what they're doing-believe it or not. So what does it matter that some of them were sixth-generation welfare recipients? They're not anymore! Now they're taxpayers, just like the rest of us. And the skills they learn in the army may be enough so that they'll never have to go back on welfare again. And at least they can see the physical fact of what they're accomplishing-most of us never do. I don't. I doubt you'll remember a tenth of what I tell you a year from now-and you don't know how frustrating that is for me to realize-but they can point to a new park or a reclaimed building and say, `I did that.' And that's quite a feeling. I know! This country benefits from their labor, you and I benefit -and most of all they benefit, because their lives are enriched. They gain skills, they gain pride and they regain their self-respect, because they're doing a job that makes a difference!"
A Matter for Men watc-1 Page 4
