Soldiers

by John Dalmas

  The summer after his thirteenth birthday, by the New Jerusalem calendar, a youth took a farm. Unless, of course, he was in line to inherit one. With family help, he might buy one in his own neighborhood-complete with buildings and mortgage-if one was for sale. But more often he moved to the frontier, and claimed new, wild land at the edge of settlement. Land surveyed by the Church, which valued orderly ways. There, with the help of neighbors, he built a log house, a log barn, and sheds, and began life as an adult. He might bring a wife from his old community, or marry into the new, and over the years they'd produce a brood of their own, to repeat the cycle.

  His first winter on his homestead, he'd hire himself out to an established neighbor, clearing land. And on his own holding, clear a garden patch, and "deaden" timber. The ax-girdled trees died a year later, and their roots and stumps didn't sprout. No one on New Jerusalem could explain why, physiologically, or felt any need to; it was simply a fact of life. Afterward, "grass" grew beneath the dead trees, providing pasture for livestock and attracting wild herbivores-wild meat. Certain food plants could even be grown in the much reduced shade. And by the time the deadened trees had been felled, cut up, dragged and burned, the roots were much decayed. The settler then had a field, hard won but ready to plow.

  Thus the typical Jerusalemites were strong, tough, self-reliant. And subject to the authority of their physical environment and the hierarchy, both of which they accepted matter-of-factly. They were a matter-of-fact people.

  Meanwhile they were unfamiliar with ethnic or religious diversity. Their immigrant ancestors had been fervent sectarians, "full of the spirit." On Terra, they'd been fearful and indignant toward a society abounding with subcultures, where political, social and religious varieties sometimes yammered, and occasionally squabbled. Despite which there was already widespread mixing, intermarrying, blending.

  From the beginning, the goal of the founders had been emigration. It had taken courage, dedication, zeal, and pretty much all their earthly wealth to organize and incorporate a colonization company, lease emigrant ships, meet the requirements for the Commonwealth's approval to launch, and leave behind almost everything familiar except each other. Many families were divided, and some, when it came down to it, backed out.

  Of those who'd followed through, the most common trait had been zeal.

  Those born to New Jerusalem were different from their migrant ancestors, though they didn't know it. They'd been inculcated from infancy with, and only with, the dogmas, values and customs of those ancestors. As modified by the early experiences of life in a heavyworld wilderness. A world where the severe difficulties of heavyworld pregnancy, and gravity-induced, early deterioration of joints and organs, culled the early generations ruthlessly, shortening lives, and helping menfolk value their wives and daughters.

  Whatever religious zeal they felt was seldom fervent. Like Esau Wesley and his wife Jael, they took their religion for granted. Its strictures seldom seemed onerous to them, and most were reasonably content with their lives.

  Lives to be lived doing worthwhile things deemed pleasing to the Lord, finding satisfactions in farming, and in their offspring and each other. Given the effects of gravity on human physiology and anatomy, the Church had recently condoned the use, after five births, of a contraceptive herb known as lamb bane. This after three generations of earnest but confidential consideration and discussion at the highest hierarchical level.

  The founders would have been horrified. But even given the generations of culling by New Jerusalem's gravity, deaths in childbirth left too many husbands alone on the farm with a brood of children to care for. And available widows were far fewer than widowers.

  Esau Wesley rarely thought about such things. He was young, sure of himself, and found pleasure in work. After wiping sweat, he'd picked up his ax to assault another tree, when his hound Clancy began to bark. Esau knew from the tone that the dog sensed a human coming, not a predator. Someone the dog knew.

  "Halloo!" the young man called. Then "Clancy! Shut up!" From a little distance came an answering halloo. A minute later, a man on horseback rode into sight among the trees: Speaker Martin Crosby from Sycamore Run,* one of Jael's uncles.

  "What brings you, Speaker?" Esau asked. Crosby hadn't been there since the parish had raised Esau's house and barn the summer before, though he'd seen him at church often enough. The older man looked more serious than usual. Outside of church, he was inclined to joke and laugh a lot.

  "Got news," he said. "Big news." From his face, it was bad.

  "Such as?"

  "Such as-a war."

  "A war?" Esau was mystified rather than alarmed. War on New Jerusalem was impossible.

  "Word just came from Terra."

  "Terra? What's that got to do with us?"

  The older farmer sighed gustily and shook his head. "Elder Fletcher is sending word to all the people." He paused, as if what followed was so unreal, he lacked the words. "Satan is coming through the worlds, with his demons. They've got the body of a donkey, with a sort of man stuck on where the neck ought to be, and a head like nothing you'd ever imagine."

  "You sure someone hasn't been japing you, Speaker Crosby?"

  The man reached into a saddlebag, brought out a folder, and leaning down, handed Esau a piece of durable paper. A photocopy from the Commonwealth embassy, printed on both sides, with a picture. It had begun as a mental image, crossing the parsecs to Terra instantaneously, from a savant on a world called Maritimus. It was almost the last thing the water world's savant saw before blacking out, a strange phenomenon even for savants. From Terra the image had been forwarded to the embassy, and sketched by the savant there. Speaker Crosby knew none of that, of course. It was enough that Elder Fletcher accepted it.

  "Keep it," Crosby said. "I've got more than enough. The demons know how to find people hiding, and got ways of killing them from the sky. That's what's said, anyway. There's sixteen thousand ships full of them, giant arks for flying between the stars. They've come to various worlds that's got folks living on them, worlds way far off, and killed everyone there, man, woman, and child. Butchered them, and wrecked everything."

  Esau looked at the picture, then back at Crosby, still not convinced, but troubled. Speaker Crosby took out another folder, this time with sheets of writing in quill pen and ink, copied at the embassy by some Terran artifice.

  "This one's written by Elder Fletcher, in his own hand, telling us what we might do. Not have to, but might. When you go up for supper, read them with Jael. See what you think. I got a bunch more of these to take around."

  The older man turned his horse then-what passed for a horse on New Jerusalem-and trotted off. Esau stood where he was, and read what Elder Fletcher had written. When he was done, he felt a deep misgiving. Without ringing another tree, Esau Wesley picked up his ax and started home. It seemed to him his whole world was about to come down around his ears.

  Chapter 11

  The Task

  Joao Gordeenko was not at his best. As deputy czar of resource allocation, he'd worked till 0320 that morning, then slept on his office couch till 0730. Which had left time for only a hasty shower and shave, a cup of strong coffee, and to get dressed before receiving his first visitor. Breakfast would wait, probably till lunch.

  The visitor, a new staff assistant, was very pretty, very bright, and very sure of herself. And well recommended. He hoped that Sarah Asayama would prove as able as her recommender claimed, but he was skeptical. She spoke well, but she'd never had anything approaching the responsibility of her new position. There was a lot of that in the burgeoning war bureaucracy. It was unavoidable. There were too few people with the knowledge and experience needed. Some would learn successfully on the job, coping, innovating. Others would be replaced, sent elsewhere.

  With Sarah Asayama's looks and personality, people tended to pull for her success, but as she talked, Gordeenko's misgivings grew like his work load. He wasn't surprised. This first assignment was in part a test of her r
eadiness for it.

  She sat six feet to his right, displaying her three-quarter profile as she spoke, while controlling the screen display with her pocket key pad. Under other circumstances he might have better appreciated her looks, but her words and the chart on his wall screen held his attention. "Unfortunately," she was saying, "the invaders' approach is taking them through a sector well populated with colonies, and on an approximate intersect with Terra."

  Does she imagine I don't already know that? he wondered.

  She switched charts. "Here is a list of the planets we need to evacuate, and their populations. The job will require a minimum of 2,900 ships, depending on the types selected." She turned, looking crisply professional. "I'm afraid it cuts rather heavily into the total."

  Great Gautama! he thought. An intelligence score of 123, and no concept whatever of the overall problem!

  Again she switched charts. "I've listed existing ships by types and classes, with their estimated capacity for stasis lockers. I realize this draft proposal requires review, and perhaps some modification, but given the colonial populations, we have little choice." Once more she turned to Gordeenko. "The less review time, the better. We need to refit the ships as quickly as possible, and get them under way."

  Gordeenko nodded thoughtfully. It seemed to him he needed to make an impact on the young woman. But be kind, Joao, be kind, he reminded himself. "I agree," he told her. "The process must be expedited." He laid his hand on his desk key pad. "But first- First I need to clarify some things for you. I see now that you needed a much fuller briefing than you were given." His thick hairy fingers touched keys. The chart on the screen was displaced by another. "As you have implied, the number of merchant vessels in the Commonwealth is finite. As for warships-we have no fleet, as I'm sure you know. Only a limited array of prototypes. And of course a few score patrol ships, small, with utterly inadequate armament, designed only to discourage piracy. Just now, every shipyard in the Commonwealth has begun building warships, or is being overhauled in order to build warships."

  The young woman interrupted, honestly confused, her crispness gone. "But sir! I was talking about ships already built."

  He raised a constraining hand. "I'll get to that, but first you must understand the problem. There are seventeen shipyards on Terra, eleven others scattered from Luna to Titan, and three each in the Epsilon Indi and Epsilon Eridani Systems. And that is all. In the entire Commonwealth! Not enough, Ms. Asayama! Not nearly enough!" Now Gordeenko began to apply the heat. "We are beginning or planning the construction of more than a hundred other shipyards, of which fifty must be operating inside of six months! Can you conceive of what that means? Everything must be done differently than ever before, if only because of the extreme shortage of shipwrights!"

  "But sir… "

  Gordeenko waved off her interjection. "And how will we provide the metals? Or transport the shipyard machinery?" His intensity caught and held her. "The demand on existing shipping will be extreme. Most of the new shipyards will be in space, in the belts of the various systems. And where will the workers live? In ships, Ms. Asayama! Hastily converted dormitory ships! The same is true for the thousands on thousands of new asteroid miners and smelter workers who will provide the metals!"

  Sarah Asayama looked ready to collapse. She'd known that the Commonwealth was drastically unprepared for this war, but she'd never considered what dealing with it might involve. She'd given no attention to media discussions of such matters. On her brief internship her days had been long, spent on her own narrow duties. While away from the office, her attention had been on theater and young men. Thus Gordeenko's exposition had been overwhelming.

  "That," he added quietly, "is a very brief summary. Very very brief. I'd assumed you'd ask questions, where you didn't know." It struck him then that she hadn't known she didn't know. "Like every other war activity," he went on, "we suffer a great lack of suitably prepared personnel. Thus we turn to persons like yourself: bright, energetic, patriotic… but with limited relevant experience, or none at all."

  Reviewing the problems for her, he realized, had stirred his emotions-a mixture of repressed anxiety and dismay at the enormity of the task. Pausing, he inhaled deeply, and shifted gears. "We expect to evacuate not more than forty to fifty percent of the colonial populations in the invasion corridor. It may prove to be more, but we're starting with that estimate. Consider: most colonies grew from religious or ethnic groups or political dissidents who withdrew into space to live in their own narrow communities. And to a considerable degree, the original colonists have forwarded their beliefs through the generations. Thus we expect that many of their people will decide to stay at home. To take their chances where they are.

  "Many colonies are so distant, the aliens will reach them before evacuation ships can. You've already allowed for that."

  He exhaled heavily, and brushed back his thick pompadour. "Aim at fifteen hundred ships. Get with Al Vorselen, the director of transport; he knows what there are and where. Sort out the possibilities with him."

  She stared. "But Mr. Gordeenko! We can't leave people out there! They'll be killed! We can't just abandon them!"

  His gaze hardened, and his voice became crisp. "If you have a magic wand, Ms. Asayama, I grant you all the ships you can conjure out of nothing. Or better yet, conjure the aliens back to wherever they came from. Meanwhile, tell Vorselen that you and he must give me your final figures no later than tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow?" she squeaked.

  "By 1600 hours. And the figures must be realistic. Then I can start requisition proceedings. They'll go swiftly; I have the necessary authority." He made a shooing motion. "Go now."

  As she reached for the door, he stopped her with a closing statement, his voice low and confidential. "And, Sarah, do not think of it as saving people. Because if the invader isn't stopped, we're all dead. The evacuees, you, me-all of us. Dead! So think of your ships as transports bringing military and labor recruits to Terra. But do NOT call them that, not to anyone. Not to your sister, your boyfriend-anyone. The evacuees are vital to us, my dear. Vital to the human species."

  She paled and nodded, then hurried out. It seemed to Joao Gordeenko that she really did understand. She might work out after all; he'd know tomorrow before supper.

  He hadn't mentioned the problems of training qualified workers, qualified ship's crews, qualified fighting men. He hadn't wanted to shock her into coma. Looking at his own chart, still on the wall screen, Gordeenko felt overwhelm wash over him. Opening a desk drawer, he took out a small bottle of vodka flavored with Vaccinium myrtillus. For just a moment he hesitated, then removed the cap, took a swig, and felt the heat spread through his belly. With sudden resolve he stepped to his small sink and poured the rest down the drain. The solution to overwhelm was not alcohol. It was more sleep, and working smart. Starting today he would quit at midnight. Or… better make that one o'clock, then sleep till seven. And during the day take two twenty-minute naps. One at least.

  He was fooling himself of course.

  Chapter 12

  Observations

  On returning to his hidey-hole, Henry Morgan was welcomed tearfully by Connie Phamonyong. The tears took him by surprise. He'd recognized his scouting expedition was dangerous, but his imagination hadn't built on it. She'd managed not to infect Robert with her worries though; he greeted his older brother with casual cheer.

  Almost the first thing Morgan did, with Connie and Robert, was message the prime minister and the defense office, newly named the Defense Ministry, or War House. Not that he had much to tell them, other than that the invaders had been clearing land. But he wanted them to know he was still alive, and intended further scouting.

  This time he got more than brief acknowledgement; both the prime minister and War House thanked him for his efforts. They also told him about the Star of Hibernia and the Gem of the Prophet. But they didn't tell him about Drago Dravec reaching Hart's Desire; they'd wait till something had actually happened with
that, besides a kidnapping.

  Nor did they tell him to be careful. Careful, he thought wryly, isn't what they need from me.

  The next morning he returned to the surface, this time headed for the gorge into which the hangar exits had opened. He set out with a blaster on his belt, and a lunch and heavy torch in his day pack. And a nervous stomach. Not because the invaders might have posted guards there; that seemed highly unlikely. His concern was that rockfall from the bombardment might keep him from getting inside.

  Lack of rope was his first problem. Seen from the top, the gorge side appeared impossible to climb. Previously trees and shrubs had found rootholds on the precipitous slope, and where it had been bare, the rock had been solid. Now the trees and shrubs were mostly gone, and the surface rock extensively fractured. If he'd been an accomplished rock climber… but he wasn't.

  He got around this literally, by hiking half a mile up the gorge, beyond the bombardment, picking his way down, then hiking back to a point from which he could size up the situation from the bottom. Hiking in the bottom wasn't easy, either. It held a lot more broken trees and rock than before. In places they'd impeded the streamflow, and he picked his way above the resulting pools.

  A bloody mess, he told himself. But war always is. When he got there, the depth of destruction was worse than he'd foreseen. The gorge wall had been destroyed back nearly to the hangars themselves, and overlying rock had collapsed into the openings. The mass of rubble had one apparent opening, but from the bottom he couldn't tell if it went all the way through. Hell, he thought, the hangar roofs might even have collapsed.

  The great pile of debris at the gorge bottom provided a start up; it required tricky scrambling, but not scaling. Above that it became more difficult. A couple of times it seemed to him he'd cliffed out, but each time he found handholds, a place to put a boot, and somewhere to go from there. After a bit, scratched and sweaty, he reached the opening, widened by invaders removing fallen rocks. The hangars had not collapsed.