War and Peace

by Stanley Schmidt (ed)

  “They did, did they?” His features seemed molded in iron. “Tell Fane and Parth they are to report to me at sunset.” He paused, added, “Without fail!”

  Resuming her seat on the rock, she watched him stride heavily down the slope toward the double star-formation. Her hands were together in her lap, much as he had held his. But hers sought nothing of each other. In complete repose, they merely rested with the ineffable patience of hands as old as time.

  Seeing at a glance that he was liverish, Jusik promptly postponed certain suggestions that he had in mind.

  “Summon captains Drek and Belthan,” Cruin ordered. When the other had gone, he flung his helmet onto the desk, surveyed himself in a mirror. He was still smoothing the tired lines on his face when approaching footsteps sent him officiously behind his desk.

  Entering, the two captains saluted, remained rigidly at attention. Cruin studied them irefully while they preserved wooden expressions.

  Eventually, he said: “I found four men lounging like undisciplined hoboes outside the safety zone.” He stared at Drek. “They were from your vessel.” The stare shifted to Belthan. “You are today’s commander of the guard. Have either of you anything to say?”

  “They were off-duty and free to leave the ship,” exclaimed Drek. “They had been warned not to go beyond the perimeter of ash.”

  “I don’t know how they slipped through,” said Belthan, in official monotone. “Obviously the guards were lax. The fault is mine.”

  “It will count against you in your promotion records,” Cruin promised. “Punish these four, and the responsible guards, as laid down in the manual of procedure and discipline.” He leaned across the desk to survey them more closely. “A repetition will bring ceremonial demotion!”

  “Yes, sir,” they chorused.

  Dismissing them, he glanced at Jusik. “When tutors Fane and Parth report here, send them in to me without delay.”

  “As you order, sir.”

  Cruin dropped the glance momentarily, brought it back. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Me?” Jusik became self-conscious. “Nothing, sir.”

  “You lie! One has to live with a person to know him. I’ve lived on your neck for three years. I know you too well to be deceived. You have something on your mind.”

  “It’s the men,” admitted Jusik, resignedly.

  “What of them?”

  “They are restless.”

  “Are they? Well, I can devise a cure for that! What’s making them restless?”

  “Several things, sir.”

  Cruin waited while Jusik stayed dumb, then roared: “Do I have to prompt you?”

  “No, sir,” Jusik protested, unwillingly. “It’s many things. Inactivity. The substitution of tedious routine. The constant waiting, waiting, waiting right on top of three years’ close incarceration. They wait—and nothing happens.”

  “What else?”

  “The sight and knowledge of familiar life just beyond the ash. The realization that Fane and Parth and the others are enjoying it with your consent. The stories told by the scouts about their experiences on landing.” His gaze was steady as he went on. “We’ve now sent out five squadrons of scouts, a total of forty vessels. Only six came back on time. All the rest were late on one plausible pretext or another. The pilots have talked, and shown the men various souvenir photographs and a few gifts. One of them is undergoing punishment for bringing back some bottles of paralysis-mixture. But the damage has been done. Their stories have unsettled the men.”

  “Anything more?”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, there was also the sight of you taking a stroll to the top of the hill. They envied you even that!” He looked squarely at Cruin. “I envied you myself.”

  “I am the commander,” said Cruin.

  “Yes, sir.” Jusik kept his gaze on him but added nothing more.

  If the second commander expected a delayed outburst, he was disappointed. A complicated series of emotions chased each other across his superior’s broad, beefy features. Laying back in his chair, Cruin’s eyes looked absently through the port while his mind juggled with Jusik’s words.

  Suddenly, he rasped: “I have observed more, anticipated more, and given matters more thought than perhaps you realize. I can see something which you may have failed to perceive. It has caused me some anxiety. Briefly, if we don’t keep pace with the march of time we’re going to find ourselves in a fix.”

  “Indeed, sir?”

  “I don’t wish you to mention this to anyone else: I suspect that we are trapped in a situation bearing no resemblance to any dealt with in the manuals.”

  “Really, sir?” Jusik licked his lips, felt that his own outspokenness was leading into unexpected paths.

  “Consider our present circumstances,” Cruin went on. “We are established here and in possession of power sufficient to enslave this planet. Any one of our supply of bombs could blast a portion of this earth stretching from horizon to horizon. But they’re of no use unless we apply them effectively. We can’t drop them anywhere, haphazardly. If parting with them in so improvident a manner proved unconvincing to our opponents, and failed to smash the hard core of their resistance, we would find ourselves unarmed in a hostile world. No more bombs. None nearer than six long years away, three there and three back. Therefore we must apply our power where it will do the most good.” He began to massage his heavy chin. “We don’t know where to apply it.”

  “No, sir,” agreed Jusik, pointlessly.

  “We’ve got to determine which cities are the key points of their civilization, which persons are this planet’s acknowledged leaders, and where they’re located. When we strike, it must be at the nerve-centers. That means we’re impotent until we get the necessary information. In turn, that means we’ve got to establish communication with the aid of tutors.” He started plucking at his jaw muscles. “And that takes time!”

  “Quite, sir, but—”

  “But while time crawls past the men’s morale evaporates. This is our twelfth day and already the crews are restless. Tomorrow they’ll be more so.”

  “I have a solution to that, sir, if you will forgive me for offering it,” said Jusik, eagerly. “On Huld everyone gets one day’s rest in five. They are free to do as they like, go where they like. Now if you promulgated an order permitting the men say one day’s liberty in ten, it would mean that no more than ten percent of our strength would be lost on any one day. We could stand that reduction considering our power, especially if more of the others are on protective duty.”

  “So at last I get what was occupying your mind. It comes out in a swift flow of words.” He smiled grimly as the other flushed. “I have thought of it. I am not quite so unimaginative as you may consider me.”

  “I don’t look upon you that way, sir,” Jusik protested.

  “Never mind. We’ll let that pass. To return to this subject of liberty—there lies the trap! There is the very quandary with which no manual deals, the situation for which I can find no officially prescribed formula.” Putting a hand on his desk, he tapped the polished surface impatiently. “If I refuse these men a little freedom, they will become increasingly restless—naturally. If I permit them the liberty they desire, they will experience contact with life more normal even though alien, and again become more restless—naturally!”

  “Permit me to doubt the latter, sir. Our crews are loyal to Huld. Blackest space forbid that it should be otherwise!”

  “They were loyal. Probably they are still loyal.” Cruin’s face quirked as hismem-ory brought forward the words that followed. “They are young, healthy, without ties. In space, that means one thing. Here, another.” He came slowly to his feet, big, bulky and imposing. “I know!”

  Looking at him, Jusik felt that indeed he did know. “Yes, sir,” he parroted, obediently.

  “Therefore the onus of what to do for the best falls squarely upon me. I must use my initiative. As second commander it is for you to see that my orde
rs are carried out to the letter.”

  “I know my duty, sir.” Jusik’s thinly drawn features registered growing uneasiness. “And it is my final decision that the men must be restrained from contact with our opponents, with no exceptions other than the four technicians operating under my orders. The crews are to be permitted no liberty, no freedom to go beyond the ash. Any form of resentment on their part must be countered immediately and ruthlessly. You will instruct the captains to watch for murmurers in their respective crews and take appropriate action to silence them as soon as found.” His jowls lumped, and his eyes were cold as he regarded the other. “All scout-flights are canceled as from now, and all scout-vessels remain grounded. None moves without my personal instructions.”

  “That is going to deprive us of a lot of information,” Jusik observed. “The last flight to the south reported discovery of ten cities completely deserted, and that’s got some significance which we ought to—”

  “I said the flights are canceled!” Cruin shouted. “If I say the scout-vessels are to be painted pale pink, they will be painted pale pink, thoroughly, completely, from end to end. I am the commander!”

  “As you order, sir.”

  “Finally, you may instruct the captains that their vessels are to be prepared for my inspection at midday tomorrow. That will give the crews something to do.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  With a worried salute, Jusik opened the door, glanced out and said: “Here are Fane, Kalma, Parth and Hefni, sir.”

  “Show them in.”

  After Cruin had given forcible expression to his views, Fane said: “We appreciate the urgency, sir, and we are doing our best, but it is doubtful whether they will be fluent before another four weeks have passed. They are slow to learn.”

  “I don’t want fluency,” Cruin growled. “All they need are enough words to tell us the things we want to know, the things we must know before we can get anywhere. “

  “I said sufficient fluency,” Fane reminded. “They communicate mostly by signs even now.”

  “That flame-headed girl didn’t.”

  “She has been quick,” admitted Fane. “Possibly she has an above-normal aptitude for languages. Unfortunately she knows the least in any military sense and therefore is of little use to us.”

  Cruin’s gaze ran over him balefully. His voice became low and menacing. “You have lived with these people many days. I look upon your features and find them different. Why is that?”

  “Different?” The four exchanged wondering looks.

  “Your faces have lost their lines, their space-gauntness. Your cheeks have become plump, well-colored. Your eyes are no longer tired. They are bright. They hold the self-satisfied expression of a fat skodar wallowing in its trough. It is obvious that you have done well for yourselves.” He bent forward, his mouth ugly. “Can it be that you are in no great hurry to complete your task?”

  They were suitably shocked.

  “We have eaten well and slept regularly,” Fane said. “We feel better for it. Our physical improvement has enabled us to work so much the harder. In our view, the foe is supporting us unwittingly with his own hospitality, and since the manual of—”

  “Hospitality?” Cruin cut in, sharply.

  Fane went mentally off-balance as vainly he sought for a less complimentary synonym.

  “I give you another week,” the commander harshed. “No more. Not one day more. At this time, one week from today, you will report here with the six prisoners adequately tutored to understand my questions and answer them.”

  “It will be difficult, sir.”

  “Nothing is difficult. Nothing is impossible. There are no excuses for anything.” He studied Fane from beneath forbidding brows. “You have my orders—obey them!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His hard stare shifted to Kalma and Hefni. “So much for the tutors; now you. What have you to tell me? How much have you discovered?”

  Blinking nervously, Hefni said: “It is not a lot. The language trouble is—”

  “May the Giant Sun bum up and perish the language trouble! How much have you learned while enjoyably larding your bellies?”

  Glancing down at his uniform-belt as if suddenly and painfully conscious of its tightness, Hefni recited: “They are exceedingly strange in so far as they appear to be highly civilized in a purely domestic sense but quite primitive in all others. This Meredith family lives in a substantial, well-equipped house. They have every comfort, including a color-television receiver.”

  “You’re dreaming! We are still seeking the secrets of plain television even on Huld. Color is unthinkable.”

  Kalma chipped in with: “Nevertheless, sir, they have it. We have seen it for ourselves.”

  “That is so,” confirmed Fane.

  “Shut up!” Cruin burned him with a glare. “I have finished with you. I am now dealing with these two.” His attention returned to the quaking Hefni: “Carry on.”

  “There is something decidedly queer about them which we’ve not yet been able to understand. They have no medium of exchange. They barter goods for goods without any regard for the relative values of either. They work when they feel like it. If they don’t feel like it, they don’t work. Yet, in spite of this, they work most of the time.”

  “Why?” demanded Cruin, incredulously.

  “We asked them. They said that one works to avoid boredom. We cannot comprehend that viewpoint.” Hefni made a defeated gesture. “In many places they have small factories which, with their strange, perverted logic, they use as amusement centers. These plants operate only when people turn up to work.”

  “Eh?” Cruin looked baffled.

  “For example, in Williamsville, a small town an hour’s walk beyond the Meredith home, there is a shoe factory. It operates every day. Some days there may be only ten workers there, other days fifty or a hundred, but nobody can remember a time when the place stood idle for lack of one voluntary worker. Meredith’s elder daughter, Marva, has worked there three days during our stay with them. We asked her the reason.”

  “What did she say?”

  “For fun.”

  “Fun … fun … fun?” Cruin struggled with the concept. “What does that mean?”

  “We don’t know,” Hefni confessed. “The barrier of speech—”

  “Red flames lick up the barrier of speech!” Cruin bawled. “Was her attendance compulsory?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You are certain of that?”

  “We are positive. One works in a factory for no other reason than because one feels like it.”

  “For what reward?” topped Cruin, shrewdly.

  “Anything or nothing.” Hefni uttered it like one in a dream. “One day she brought back a pair of shoes for her mother. We asked if they were her reward for the work she had done. She said they were not, and that someone named George had made them and given them to her. Apparently the rest of the factory’s output for that week was shipped to another town where shoes were required. This other town is going to send back a supply of leather, nobody knows how much—and nobody seems to care.”

  “Senseless,” defined Cruin. “It is downright imbecility.” He examined Hefni as if suspecting him of inventing confusing data. “It is impossible for even the most primitive of organizations to operate so haphazardly. Obviously you have seen only part of the picture; the rest has been concealed from you, or you have been too dull-witted to perceive it.”

  “I assure you, sir,” began Hefni.

  “Let it pass,” Cruin cut in. “Why should I care how they function economically? In the end, they’ll work the way we want them to!” He rested his heavy jaw in one hand. “There are other matters which interest me more. For instance, our scouts have brought in reports of many cities. Some are organized but grossly under-populated; others are completely deserted. The former have well-constructed landing places with air-machines making use of them. How is it that people so primitive have air-ma-chines?”

>   “Some make shoes, some make air-machines, some play with television. They work according to their aptitudes as well as their inclinations.”

  “Has this Meredith got an air-machine?”

  “No.” The look of defeat was etched more deeply on Hefni’s face. “If he wanted one he would have his desire inserted in the television supply-and-demand program.”

  “Then what?”

  “Sooner or later, he’d get one, new or secondhand, either in exchange for something or as a gift.”

  “Just by asking for it?”

  “Yes.”

  Getting up, Cruin strode to and fro across his office. The steel heel-plates on his boots clanked on the metal floor in rhythm with the bells. He was ireful, impatient, dissatisfied.

  “In all this madness is nothing which tells us anything of their true character on their organization.” Stopping his stride, he faced Hefni. “You boasted that you were to be the eyes and ears.” He released a loud snort. “Blind eyes and deaf ears! Not one word about their numerical strength, not one—”

  “Pardon me, sir,” said Hefni, quickly, “there are twenty-seven millions of them.”

  “Ah!” Cruin registered sharp interest. “Only twenty-seven millions? Why, there’s a hundred times that number on Huld, which has no greater area of land surface.” He mused a moment. “Greatly underpopulated. Many cities devoid of a living soul. They have air-machines and other items suggestive of a civilization greater than the one they now enjoy. They operate the remnants of an economic system. You realize what all this means?”

  Hefni blinked, made no reply. Kalma looked thoughtful. Fane and Parth remained blank-faced and tight-lipped.

  “It means two things,” Cruin pursued. “War or disease. One or the other, or perhaps both—and on a large scale. I want information on that. I’ve got to learn what sort of weapons they employed in their war, how many of them remain available, and where. Or, alternatively, what disease ravished their numbers, its source, and its cure.” He tapped Hefni’s chest to emphasize his words. “I want to know what they’ve got hidden away, what they’re trying to keep from your knowledge against the time when they can bring it out and use it against us. Above all, I want to know which people will issue orders for their general offensive and where they are located.”