Murray Leinster

by The Best of Murray Leinster (1976)

  Freddy was silent. The little spaceboat clung to the side of the Amina, which with its drive off was now drifting in sunward past the orbit of Jupiter.

  ‘It is very rare,’ said the skipper ungraciously, ‘that a superior officer in the Patrol apologizes to an inferior. But I apologize to you, Mr. Holmes, for thinking you a fool. And when I think that I, and certainly every other Patrol officer of experience, would have thought of nothing but setting that ship down at Patrol Base for study, and when I think what an atomic explosion of a hundred thousand tons of matter would have done to Earth… I apologize a second time.’

  Freddy said uncomfortably:

  If there are to be any apologies made, sir, I guess I’ve got to make them. Every man on the Amina has figured he’s rich, and I’ve sent it all back where it came from. But you see, sir, the Ethical Equation»—’

  When Freddy’s resignation went in with the report of his investigation of the alien vessel, it was returned marked ‘Not AcceptedAnd Freddy was ordered to report to a tiny, hard-worked spacecan on which a junior Space Patrol officer normally gets his ears pinned back and learns his work the hard way. And Freddy was happy, because he wanted to be a Space Patrol officer more than he wanted anything else in the world. His uncle was satisfied, too, because he wanted Freddy to be content, and because certain space-admirals truculently told him that Freddy was needed in the Patrol and would get all the consideration and promotion he needed without any politicians butting in. And the Space Patrol was happy because it had a lot of new gadgets to work with which were going to make it a force able not only to look after interplanetary traffic but defend it, if necessary.

  And, for that matter, the Ethical Equations were satisfied.;

  SYMBIOSIS

  War. Leinster tackled this theme often, and in a variety of ways. At the time that this story appeared he had just written %The Murder of the U.S.A. for Argosy magazine. The fact that this item first appeared in Collier’s is a reminder that Leinster wrote well over a thousand stories for general publication. It is very much the type of story that he wrote so well, leaving one thinking ‘if only it were possible…’

  Surgeon General Mors was out in the rural districts of Kantolia Province, patiently arguing peasants into allowing the vaccination of their pigs and the inoculation of their families, when the lightning occupation took place.

  There was no declaration of war, of course. Parachutists simply began to drop out of a predawn sky an hour before sunrise; at the same time, jet planes sprayed the quiet empty streets of Stadheim, the provincial capital, with machine-gun bullets, which killed two dogs and a stray cat. Then roaring, motorized columns raced across the international bridge at Balt. Armed men rounded up the drowsy customs guards and held them prisoner while tanks, armored cars, and all the impressive panoply of war drove furiously into the still peacefully sleeping countryside. Then armored trains chuffed impressively across the international line, their whisdes bellowing defiance to the switch engines and handcars in the Kantolian engine yards. A splendid, totally unheralded stroke of conquest began in the cold gray light of early morning.

  When dawn actually arrived and the people of Kantolia began to wake in their beds, more than half of die province was already in enemy hands. The few enemy casualties occurred in a railroad wreck, which itself was due to the action of over-enthusiastic quislings who blew up a railroad bridge to prevent the arrival of defending troops. That action merely held up the invasion program by two hours and a half in that sector. By eight o’clock of a drowsy, sunny morning, the province of Kantolia had been taken over.

  Surgeon General Mors heard about it at nine, while he stood beside a pigsty and patiently argued with a peasant who had so far refused to allow either his pigs or his family to be inoculated. Mors heard the news in silence. Then he turned heavily to the civilian doctor with him.

  ‘I had not much hope, but it is very bad,’ he said. ‘War is always bad! And I hoped so much that we would finish our program of immunization! No nation before has ever achieved one hundred per cent inoculation. It would have been a very great achievement.’

  Standing beside the pigsty he wiped his forehead. “Now, of course, I shall have to go to Stadheim. That will be the enemy headquarters, no doubt. I hope, Doctor, that you will continue the inoculation program while you can. I beg you to do so! One hundred per cent immunization in even a single province would be a great feat! And after all, it is not as if the enemy would not be driven out. But even in ten days terrible damage can be done!’

  He went to the small, battered car in which he had been making his rounds, arguing with stubborn peasants. He was a stocky little man with deep circles under his eyes - somehow officials of small nations located close to a large one with visions of military glory tend not to sleep well of nights. Surgeon General Mors had not slept well for a long time.

  Perhaps, as a military officer, he should have tried to rejoin the defending army which so far had not fired a shot. But his presence in this region had been to further the inoculation program, and that program had locally been directed from Stadheim.

  As his car bumped and whined along the highway toward the provincial capital, the occupation progressed all about him without actually touching him. Three times he heard flights of jet planes roaring through the clear blue sky above. He could not pick them out because of their speed. Once he saw a faraway cloud of dust which was an armored column racing for some strategic spot not yet taken over. The enemy acted as if Kantolia had brisded with troops and weapons, instead of being defended only by customs guards at the border and the fifteen-man police force of Stadheim.

  The little car clanked and sputtered. The morning was quite perfect. Here and there a cotton wool cloud floated in the blue. All about were green tablelands, spread with lusty growing crops. Surgeon General Mors looked almost enviously at the unconcerned people of the rustic villages through which he passed. They had no desire for war, and most of them did not yet know that it had come. He felt that any conceivable means was permissible for the defense of simple people like these against the alleged ideals of the enemy. But he looked very unhappy indeed.

  Toward noon, he saw the steeples of Stadheim before him. But he turned abruptly aside as if to postpone the inevitable. He drove up a gentle, rolling incline until he came to the squat, functional building which housed the pumping station for the provincial city’s water supply. The station and its surroundings seemed untouched, but when the engineer of the pumping station came out, the surgeon general could tell by his expression that he knew of the tragedy that had struck the country.

  Surgeon General Mors got out of the car.

  ‘They have not come here yet,’ he said in a flat, matter-of-fact voice.

  ‘Not yet,’ said the engineer. He ground his teeth. ‘I have carried out my orders,’ he said harshly. 8Just as I was told.’

  Surgeon General Mors nodded.

  ‘That is good.’ Then he hesitated. ‘1 would like to look over the plant,’ he said almost apologetically. ‘It is very modem and clean. The - enemy spent their money on guns. They might try to remove it for one of their cities.’

  The engineer stood aside. Surgeon General Mors went through the little pumping plant. There were only twenty thousand people in Stadheim, so a large installation was not required, but it was sound and practical. There were the filters, and the chlorination apparatus, and the well-equipped small laboratory for tests of the water’s purity. The people of Stadheim would always have good water to drink, if the invaders didn’t wreck or remove this machinery.

  ‘It is good,’ said the stocky little man unhappily, ‘to see things like this. It makes for people to be healthy, and therefore happy. Do you know,’ he added irrelevantly, ‘that our inoculation program was almost one hundred per cent complete? Ah, well—’ He paused. ‘I must go on to Stadheim. The invaders are there. I shall try to reason with them about our sanitary arrangements. Their soldiers will not understand how careful we are about sanitati
on. I shall try to get them not to make changes while they are here.’

  The engineer’s eyes burned suddenly.

  ‘While they are here!’

  ‘Yes,’ Surgeon General Mors went on disconsolately. ‘They will not stay more than ten days. War is very terrible! It is everything that we doctors fight against all our lives. But so long as men do not understand, there must be wars.’ He drew a deep, unhappy breath. ‘It will indeed be terrible! May it be the last.’

  There was a sudden change in the engineer’s eyes.

  ‘Then we fight? My orders—’

  ‘Yes/ said Surgeon General Mors, reluctantly. ‘In our own way, we fight. In the only way a small nation can defend itself against a great one. We may need as long as ten days before we drive them out, and when it comes it will be a very terrible victory!’

  He hesitated, and then spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. He walked out to the car and drove sturdily toward Stadheim.

  Sentries stopped him at the outskirts of the city, to confiscate the car. But when he got out wearing the uniform of his country’s military force, he was immediately arrested. He was marched toward the center of the city by a soldier who held a bayonet pressing Iighdy against the small of the little man’s back. Mors, of course, was of the medical branch of his army and looked hopelessly unmilitary, and he carried no weapon more dangerous than a fountain pen. But the enemy soldier felt like a conqueror, and this was his first chance to act the part.

  When the surgeon general of his country’s army was taken to the general commanding the invading troops, the latter was already much annoyed. There had not been a single shot fired in the invasion, and this time the history books would place the credit where it belonged - with the dull, anonymous men who had prepared timetables and traffic control orders, rather than with the combat leadership. General Vladek would go down in history, if at all, only as the nominal leader of an intricate crosscountry troop movement. This he did not like.

  An hour since, too, he had performed an impressive ceremony on a balcony of the provincial capitol building. With officers flanking him and troops drawn up in the square below, he had read a proclamation to the people of Kantolia. They had been redeemed, said the proclamation, from the grinding oppression of their native country; henceforth they would enjoy all the blessings of oppressive taxes and secret police enjoyed by the invaders. They should rejoice, because now they were citizens of their great neighbor - and anybody who did not rejoice was very likely to be shot. In short, General Vladek had read a proclamation annexing Kantolia to his own country, and he felt very much like a fool. It was not exactly a gala occasion. But the only witnesses outside of his own troops had been two gaping street sweepers and a little knot of twenty quislings who tried to make their cheers atone for the silence of the twenty thousand people who stayed away.

  However, when Surgeon General Mors was brought to his office as a prisoner of war, General Vladek felt a little better. A general officer taken prisoner! This had some of the savor of traditional war! The prisoner, of course, was a stocky, short figure in a badly fitting uniform, and his broad features indicated peasant ancestry. But General Vladek tried to make the most of the situation with military courtesy.

  ‘1 offer my apologies,’ said General Vladek grandly, ‘if you were subjected to any discourtesy at the time of your capture, my dear General. But after all’ - he smiled condescendingly -‘this is war!’

  ‘Is it?’ asked Mors. He continued in a businesslike tone: ‘I was not sure. When was the declaration of war issued, and by whom?’

  General Vladek blinked.

  !Why - ah - no formal declaration was made by my government. There were military reasons for secrecy.’

  Surgeon General Mors sat down and mopped his face.

  ‘Ahl I am relieved. If you invaded without a declaration of war, you have the legal status of a bandit. Naturally, my government would not regularize your position. Even as a bandit, however,’ he said prosaically, ‘you will understand that the local sanitary arrangements should not be interfered with. That was what I came to see you about. My country has the lowest death rate in all Europe, and any meddling with our health services would be very stupid. I hope you will give orders—’

  General Vladek roared. Then he calmed himself, fuming. ‘1 did not receive you to be lectured,’ he said stiffly. ‘So far as I am aware, you are the ranking officer of your army to be captured by my men. I make a formal demand for the surrender of all troops under your command.’

  ‘But there aren’t any!’ said Surgeon General Mors in surprise. My government would not be so imbecilic as to leave soldiers in a province they were not strong enough to defend! They’d only have been killed in trumped-up fighting so you could claim a victory!’

  General Vladek’s eyes glittered. He pounced.

  ‘Ha! Then your government knew that we intended to invade?’

  ‘My dear man!’ said Mors with some tartness. ‘Your government has been drooling at the mouth for years over the fact that the taxes from our richest province would almost balance its budgetl Of course we suspected you would someday try to seize it! We are not altogether fools!’

  ‘Yet,’ said General Vladek sardonically, ‘you did not prepare to defend it!’

  Surgeon General Mors blinked at the slim, bemedaled figure of his official captor.

  ‘When a peaceful householder hears a burglar in his house,’ he said shortly, ‘he may or may not go to fight himself, but he does not send his young sons! If he is sensible, he sends for the police.’

  ‘He sends for the police!’ repeated Vladek incredulously. ‘My good Surgeon General Mors, do you expect the United Nations to interfere in this matter? The United Nations is run by diplomats, phrasemakers. They are aghast and helpless before an accomplished fact like our actual possession of Kantolia! My good sir—’

  ‘This talk is nonsense!’ said Mors irritably. ‘I came to offer you the benefit of my experience in matters of military and public health. Do you have the welfare of your men actually at heart?’

  There was a pause. General Vladek was slim and beautifully tailored. He did not belong in the office of the provincial governor of Kantolia, whose desk was still littered with papers concerning such local affairs as the price of pigs and crops and an outbreak of measles in the public schools. The office was slightly grubby, despite a certain plebeian attempt at elegance. General Vladek seemed fastidiously detached from his surroundings. And he was amused.

  ‘I assure you,’ said General Vladek, ‘that I am duly solicitous of my men’s health.’ flf you are solicitous enough,’ said Surgeon General Mors curtly, ‘you will get them out of here as quickly as they came in! But I can hardly expect you to comply with that wish. What I have to say is that your troops had better have as little to do with the civilian population as possible - no communication of any sort that can possibly be avoided.’

  ‘You are ridiculous,’ said General Vladek, annoyed. ‘Kantolia is now part of my country. Its people are the fellow citizens of my troops. Isolate them? Ridiculous!’

  Surgeon General Mors stood up and shrugged.

  ‘Very well,’ he said heavily. ‘I advised you. Now, either I am a prisoner or I am not. If not, I would like a pass allowing me to

  go about freely. The sudden entry of so large an invading force introduces problems of public health—’ rWhich my medical corps/ said General Vladek scornfully, ‘is quite able to cope with! You are a prisoner, and I think a fool! Good day!’

  Surgeon General Mors marched stolidly to the door____

  Since the invasion was not yet one day old, there had been no time to build concentration camps. Surgeon General Mors was confined, therefore, in a school which had been closed to education that it might be taken over and used as a prison. He found himself in company with the provincial governor of Kantolia, with the mayor of Stadheim, and various other officials arrested by the invaders. There were private citizens in confinement, too - mosdy peopl
e whom the small number of quislings in Kantolia had denounced. They were not accused of crimes, as yet. Even the invading army did not yet pretend that they had committed any offense against either military or civilian law. But most of them were frantic. It was not easy to forget tales of hostages shot for acts of resistance by conquered populations. They knew of places where leading citizens had been exterminated for the crime of being leading citizens, and educated men destroyed because they rejected propaganda that outraged all reason. The fate of Kantolia had precedents. If precedent were followed, those first arrested when the land was overrun were in no enviable situation.

  Surgeon General Mors tried to reassure them, but he had not much success. The entire situation looked hopeless. The seizure of a single province of a very minor nation would appear to the rest of the world either as a crisis, or an affront to the United Nations, or as a rectification of frontiers - according to the nationality and political persuasion of the commentator. It would go on the agenda of the United Nations Council; defdy it would be intermixed with other matters so that it could not be untangled and considered separately. Ultimately it would be the subject of a compromise - one item in a complicated Great-Power deal - which would leave matters exacdy as the invaders wished them. Practically speaking, that was the prospect.

  ‘‘But the fact/ said Surgeon General Mors, ‘is that such things cannot continue forever. The life of humanity is a symbiosis, a living-together, in all its stages. It begins with the symbiotic relationship of members of a family, each of whom helps and is helped by all the rest. But it rises to the symbiotic relationship of nations, of which each is an organism necessary to the others, and all are mutually helpful.’

  ‘But there is parasitic symbiosis, in which one organism seeks to prey upon another as our enemy seeks to prey upon us,’ interjected an amateur naturalist who was a fellow prisoner.