Hunter pulled out a chair and sat down. He looked at the yellow paper in his hand. "Not very carefully," he said. "There are three breaks in the railroad all within ten miles."
"Well, take a look at them and see what you think," Lanser said.
Hunter reached for a tube and stripped off the outer covering, and inside was a small package next to the tube. Hunter took out a knife and cut into the tube. Captain Loft looked over his shoulder. Then Hunter smelled the cut and rubbed his fingers together, and he said, "It's silly. It's commercial dynamite. I don't know what per cent of nitroglycerin until I test it." He looked at the end. "It has a regular dynamite cap, fulminate of mercury, and a fuse--about a minute, I suppose." He tossed the tube back onto the table. "It's very cheap and very simple," he said.
The colonel looked at Loft. "How many do you think were dropped?"
"I don't know, sir," said Loft. "We picked up about fifty of them, and about ninety parachutes they came in. For some reason the people leave the parachutes when they take the tubes, and then there are probably a lot we haven't found yet."
Lanser waved his hand. "It doesn't really matter," he said. "They can drop as many as they want. We can't stop it, and we can't use it against them, either. They haven't conquered anybody."
Loft said fiercely, "We can beat them off the face of the earth!"
Hunter was prying the copper cap out of the top of one of the sticks, and Lanser said, "Yes--we can do that. Have you looked at this wrapper, Hunter?"
"Not yet, I haven't had time."
"It's kind of devilish, this thing," said Colonel Lanser. "The wrapper is blue, so that it's easy to see. Unwrap the outer paper and here"--he picked up the small package--"here is a piece of chocolate. Everybody will be looking for it. I'll bet our own soldiers steal the chocolate. Why, the kids will be looking for them, like Easter eggs."
A soldier came in and laid a square of yellow paper in front of the colonel and retired, and Lanser glanced at it and laughed harshly. "Here's something for you, Hunter. Two more breaks in your line."
Hunter looked up from the copper cap he was examining, and he asked, "How general is this? Did they drop them everywhere?"
Lanser was puzzled. "Now, that's the funny thing. I've talked to the capital. This is the only place they've dropped them."
"What do you make of that?" Hunter asked.
"Well, it's hard to say. I think this is a test place. I suppose if it works here they'll use it all over, and if it doesn't work here they won't bother."
"What are you going to do?" Hunter asked.
"The capital orders me to stamp this out so ruthlessly that they won't drop it any place else."
Hunter said plaintively, "How am I going to mend five breaks in the railroad? I haven't rails right now for five breaks."
"You'll have to rip out some of the old sidings, I guess," said Lanser.
Hunter said, "That'll make a hell of a roadbed."
"Well, anyway, it will make a roadbed."
Major Hunter tossed the tube he had torn apart onto the pile, and Loft broke in, "We must stop this thing at once, sir. We must arrest and punish people who pick these things up, before they use them. We have to get busy so these people won't think we are weak."
Lanser was smiling at him, and he said, "Take it easy, Captain. Let's see what we have first, and then we'll think of remedies."
He took a new package from the pile and unwrapped it. He took the little piece of chocolate, tasted it, and he said, "This is a devilish thing. It's good chocolate, too. I can't even resist it myself. The prize in the grab-bag." Then he picked up the dynamite. "What do you think of this really, Hunter?"
"What I told you. It's very cheap and very effective for small jobs, dynamite with a cap and a one-minute fuse. It's good if you know how to use it. It's no good if you don't."
Lanser studied the print on the inside of the wrapper. "Have you read this?"
"Glanced at it," said Hunter.
"Well, I have read it, and I want you to listen to it carefully," said Lanser. He read from the paper, " 'To the unconquered people: Hide this. Do not expose yourself. You will need this later. It is a present from your friends to you and from you to the invader of your country. Do not try to do large things with it.' " He began to skip through the bill. "Now here, 'rails in the country.' And, 'work at night.' And, 'tie up transportation.' Now here, 'Instruc tions: rails. Place stick under rail close to the joint, and tight against a tie. Pack mud or hard-beaten snow around it so that it is firm. When the fuse is lighted you have a slow count of sixty before it explodes.' "
He looked up at Hunter and Hunter said simply, "It works." Lanser looked back at his paper and he skipped through. " 'Bridges: Weaken, do not destroy.' And here, 'transmission poles,' and here, 'culverts, trucks.' " He laid the blue handbill down. "Well, there it is."
Loft said angrily, "We must do something! There must be a way to control this. What does headquarters say?"
Lanser pursed his lips and his fingers played with one of the tubes. "I could have told you what they'd say before they said it. I have the orders. 'Set booby traps and poison the chocolate.' " He paused for a moment and then he said, "Hunter, I'm a good, loyal man, but sometimes when I hear the brilliant ideas of headquarters, I wish I were a civilian, an old, crippled civilian. They always think they are dealing with stupid people. I don't say that this is a measure of their intelligence, do I?"
Hunter looked amused. "Do you?"
Lanser said sharply, "No, I don't. But what will happen? One man will pick up one of these and get blown to bits by our booby trap. One kid will eat chocolate and die of strychnine poisoning. And then?" He looked down at his hands. "They will poke them with poles, or lasso them, before they touch them. They will try the chocolate on the cat. Goddamn it, Major, these are intelligent people. Stupid traps won't catch them twice."
Loft cleared his throat. "Sir, this is defeatist talk," he said. "We must do something. Why do you suppose it was only dropped here, sir?"
And Lanser said, "For one of two reasons: either this town was picked at random or else there is communication between this town and the outside. We know that some of the young men have got away."
Loft repeated dully, "We must do something, sir."
Now Lanser turned on him. "Loft, I think I'll recommend you for the General Staff. You want to get to work before you even know what the problem is. This is a new kind of conquest. Always before, it was possible to disarm a people and keep them in ignorance. Now they listen to their radios and we can't stop them. We can't even find their radios."
A soldier looked in through the doorway. "Mr. Corell to see you, sir."
Lanser replied, "Tell him to wait." He continued to talk to Loft. "They read the handbills; weapons drop from the sky for them. Now it's dynamite, Captain. Pretty soon it may be grenades, and then poison."
Loft said anxiously, "They haven't dropped poison yet."
"No, but they will. Can you think what will happen to the morale of our men or even to you if the people had some of those little game darts, you know, those silly things you throw at a target, the points coated perhaps with cyanide, silent, deadly little things that you couldn't hear coming, that would pierce the uniform and make no noise? And what if our men knew that arsenic was about? Would you or they drink or eat comfortably?"
Hunter said dryly, "Are you writing the enemy's campaign, Colonel?"
"No, I'm trying to anticipate it."
Loft said, "Sir, we sit here talking when we should be searching for this dynamite. If there is organization among these people, we have to find it, we have to stamp it out."
"Yes," said Lanser, "we have to stamp it out, ferociously, I suppose. You take a detail, Loft. Get Prackle to take one. I wish we had more junior officers. Tonder's getting killed didn't help us a bit. Why couldn't he let women alone?"
Loft said, "I don't like the way Lieutenant Prackle is acting, sir."
"What's he doing?"
"He i
sn't doing anything, but he's jumpy and he's gloomy."
"Yes," Lanser said, "I know. It's a thing I've talked about so much. You know," he said, "I might be a major-general if I hadn't talked about it so much. We trained our young men for victory and you've got to admit they're glorious in victory, but they don't quite know how to act in defeat. We told them they were brighter and braver than other young men. It was a kind of shock to them to find out that they aren't a bit braver or brighter than other young men."
Loft said harshly, "What do you mean by defeat? We are not defeated?"
And Lanser looked coldly up at him for a long moment and did not speak, and finally Loft's eyes wavered, and he said, "Sir."
"Thank you," said Lanser.
"You don't demand it of the others, sir."
"They don't think about it, so it isn't an insult. When you leave it out, it's insulting."
"Yes, sir," said Loft.
"Go on, now, try to keep Prackle in hand. Start your search. I don't want any shooting unless there's an overt act, do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," said Loft, and he saluted formally and went out of the room.
Hunter regarded Colonel Lanser amusedly. "Weren't you rough on him?"
"I had to be. He's frightened. I know his kind. He has to be disciplined when he's afraid or he'll go to pieces. He relies on discipline the way other men rely on sympathy. I suppose you'd better get to your rails. You might as well expect that tonight is the time when they'll really blow them, though."
Hunter stood up and he said, "Yes. I suppose the orders are coming in from the capital?"
"Yes."
"Are they--"
"You know what they are," Lanser interrupted. "You know what they'd have to be. Take the leaders, shoot the leaders, take hostages, shoot the hostages, take more hostages, shoot them"--his voice had risen but now it sank almost to a whisper--"and the hatred growing and the hurt between us deeper and deeper."
Hunter hesitated. "Have they condemned any from the list of names?" and he motioned slightly toward the Mayor's bedroom.
Lanser shook his head. "No, not yet. They are just arrested so far."
Hunter said quietly, "Colonel, do you want me to recommend-- maybe you're overtired, Colonel? Could I--you know--could I report that you're overtired?"
For a moment Lanser covered his eyes with his hand, and then his shoulders straightened and his face grew hard. "I'm not a civilian, Hunter. We're short enough of officers already. You know that. Get to your work, Major. I have to see Corell."
Hunter smiled. He went to the door and opened it, and he said out of the door, "Yes, he's here," and over his shoulder he said to Lanser, "It's Prackle. He wants to see you."
"Send him in," said Lanser.
Prackle came in, his face sullen, belligerent. "Colonel Lanser, sir, I wish to--"
"Sit down," said Lanser. "Sit down and rest a moment. Be a good soldier, Lieutenant."
The stiffness went out of Prackle quickly. He sat down beside the table and rested his elbows on it. "I wish--"
And Lanswer said, "Don't talk for a moment. I know what it is. You didn't think it would be this way, did you? You thought it would be rather nice."
"They hate us," Prackle said. "They hate us so much." Lanser smiled. "I wonder if I know what it is. It takes young men to make good soldiers, and young men need young women, is that it?"
"Yes, that's it."
"Well," Lanser said kindly, "does she hate you?"
Prackle looked at him in amazement. "I don't know, sir. Sometimes I think she's only sorry."
"And you're pretty miserable?"
"I don't like it here, sir."
"No, you thought it would be fun, didn't you? Lieutenant Tonder went to pieces and then he went out and they got a knife in him. I could send you home. Do you want to be sent home, knowing we need you here?"
Prackle said uneasily, "No, sir, I don't."
"Good. Now I'll tell you, and I hope you'll understand it. You're not a man any more. You are a soldier. Your comfort is of no importance and, Lieutenant, your life isn't of much importance. If you live, you will have memories. That's about all you will have. Meanwhile you must take orders and carry them out. Most of the orders will be unpleasant, but that's not your business. I will not lie to you, Lieutenant. They should have trained you for this, and not for flower-strewn streets. They should have built your soul with truth, not led along with lies." His voice grew hard. "But you took the job, Lieutenant. Will you stay with it or quit it? We can't take care of your soul."
Prackle stood up. "Thank you, sir."
"And the girl," Lanser continued, "the girl, Lieutenant, you may rape her, or protect her, or marry her--that is of no importance so long as you shoot her when it is ordered."
Prackle said wearily, "Yes, sir, thank you, sir."
"I assure you it is better to know. I assure you of that. It is better to know. Go now, Lieutenant, and if Corell is still waiting, send him in." And he watched Lieutenant Prackle out of the doorway.
When Mr. Corell came in, he was a changed man. His left arm was in a cast, and he was no longer the jovial, friendly, smiling Corell. His face was sharp and bitter, and his eyes squinted down like little dead pig's eyes.
"I should have come before, Colonel," he said, "but your lack of co-operation made me hesitant."
Lanser said, "You were waiting for a reply to your report, I remember."
"I was waiting for much more than that. You refused me a position of authority. You said I was valueless. You did not realize that I was in this town long before you were. You left the Mayor in his office, contrary to my advice."
Lanser said, "Without him here we might have had more disorder than we have."
"That is a matter of opinion," Corell said. "This man is a leader of a rebellious people."
"Nonsense," said Lanser; "he's just a simple man."
With his good hand Corell took a black notebook from his right pocket and opened it with his fingers. "You forgot, Colonel, that I had my sources, that I had been here a long time before you. I have to report to you that Mayor Orden has been in constant contact with every happening in this community. On the night when Lieutenant Tonder was murdered, he was in the house where the murder was committed. When the girl escaped to the hills, she stayed with one of his relatives. I traced her there, but she was gone. Whenever men have escaped, Orden has known about it and has helped them. And I even strongly suspect that he is somewhere in the picture of these little parachutes."
Lanser said eagerly, "But you can't prove it."
"No," Corell said, "I can't prove it. The first thing I know; the last I only suspect. Perhaps now you will be willing to listen to me."
Lanser said quietly, "What do you suggest?"
"These suggestions, Colonel, are a little stronger than suggestions. Orden must now be a hostage and his life must depend on the peacefulness of this community. His life must depend on the lighting of one single fuse on one single stick of dynamite."
He reached into his pocket again and brought out a little folding book, and he flipped it open and laid it in front of the colonel. "This, sir, was the answer to my report from headquarters. You will notice that it gives me certain authority."
Lanser looked at the little book and he spoke quietly. "You really did go over my head, didn't you?" He looked up at Corell with frank dislike in his eyes. "I heard you'd been injured. How did it happen?"
Corell said, "On the night when your lieutenant was murdered I was waylaid. The patrol saved me. Some of the townsmen escaped in my boat that night. Now, Colonel, must I express more strongly than I have that Mayor Orden must be held hostage?"
Lanser said, "He is here, he hasn't escaped. How can we hold him more hostage than we are?"
Suddenly in the distance there was a sound of an explosion, and both men looked around in the direction from which it came. Corell said, "There it is, Colonel, and you know perfectly well that if this experiment succeeds there will be dynamite in e
very invaded country."
Lanser repeated quietly, "What do you suggest?"
"Just what I have said. Orden must be held against rebellion."
"And if they rebel and we shoot Orden?"
"Then that little doctor is next; although he holds no position, he's next authority in the town."
"But he holds no office."
"He has the confidence of the people."
"And when we shoot him, what then?"
"Then we have authority. Then rebellion will be broken. When we have killed the leaders, the rebellion will be broken."
Lanser asked quizzically, "Do you really think so?"
"It must be so."
Lanser shook his head slowly and then he called, "Sentry!" The door opened and a soldier appeared in the doorway. "Sergeant," said Lanser, "I have placed Mayor Orden under arrest, and I have placed Doctor Winter under arrest. You will see to it that Orden is guarded and you will bring Winter here immediately."
The sentry said, "Yes, sir."
Lanser looked up at Corell and he said, "You know, I hope you know what you're doing. I do hope you know what you're doing."
8
In the little town the news ran quickly. It was communicated by whispers in doorways, by quick, meaningful looks--"The Mayor's been arrested"--and through the town a little quiet jubilance ran, a fierce little jubilance, and people talked quietly together and went apart, and people going in to buy food leaned close to the clerks for a moment and a word passed between them.
The people went into the country, into the woods, searching for dynamite. And children playing in the snow found the dynamite, and by now even the children had their instructions. They opened the packages and ate the chocolate, and then they buried the dynamite in the snow and told their parents where it was.
Far out in the country a man picked up a tube and read the instructions and he said to himself, "I wonder if this works." He stood the tube up in the snow and lighted the fuse, and he ran back from it and counted, but his count was fast. It was sixty-eight before the dynamite exploded. He said, "It does work," and he went hurriedly about looking for more tubes.
The Short Novels of John Steinbeck Page 42
