“Why …” he said, “if Kenebuck hadn’t had to send his hoods out of the room to make it seem necessary for him to shoot you himself when you put your hand into your pocket that second time—or if you hadn’t had the card in the first place—“ He broke off, suddenly thoughtful. “You mean . . . ?” he stared at Ian. “Having the card, you planned to have Kenebuck get you alone . . . ?”
“It was a form of personal combat,” said Ian. “And personal combat is my business. You assumed that Kenebuck was strongly entrenched, facing my attack. But it was the other way around.”
“But you had to come to him—“
“I had to appear to come to him,” said Ian, almost coldly. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have believed that he had to kill me—before I killed him. By his decision to kill me, he put himself in the attacking position.”
“But he had all the advantages!” said Tyburn, his head whirling. “You had to fight on his ground, here where he was strong …”
“No,” said Ian. “You’re confusing the attack position with the defensive one. By coming here, I put Kenebuck in the position of finding out whether I actually had the birthday card, and the knowledge of why Brian had gone against orders into enemy territory that night. Kenebuck planned to have his men in the foyer shake me down for the card—but they lost their nerve.”
“I remember,” murmured Tyburn.
“Then, when I handed him the package, he was sure the card was in it. But it wasn’t,” went on Ian. “He saw his only choice was to give me a situation where I might feel it was safe to admit having the card and the knowledge. He had to know about that, because Brian had called his bluff by going out and risk-
ing his neck after getting the card. The fact Brian was tried and executed later made no difference to Kenebuck. That was a matter of law—something apart from hoodlum guts, or lack of guts. If no one knew that Brian was braver than his older brother, that was all right; but if I knew, he could only save face under his own standards by killing me.”
“He almost did,” said Tyburn. “Any one of those slugs—“
“There was the medical mech,” said Ian, calmly. “A man like Kenebuck would be bound to have something like that around to play safe—just as he would be bound to set an amateur’s trap.” The boarding horn of the spaceliner sounded. Ian picked up his luggage bag. “Good-by,” he said, offering his hand to Tyburn.
“Good-by …” he muttered. “So you were just going along with Kenebuck’s trap, all of it. I can’t believe it . . .” He released Ian’s hand and watched as the big man swung around and took the first two strides away toward the bulk of the ship shining in the winter sunlight. Then, suddenly, the numbness broke clear from Tyburn’s mind. He ran after Ian and caught at his arm. Ian stopped and swung half-around, frowning slightly.
“I can’t believe it!” cried Tyburn. “You mean you went up there, knowing Kenebuck was going to pump you full of slugs and maybe kill you—all just to square things for thirty-two enlisted soldiers under the command of a man you didn’t even like? I don’t believe it —you can’t be that cold-blooded! I don’t care how much of a man of the military you are!”
Ian looked down at him. And it seemed to Tyburn that the Dorsai face had gone away from him, somehow become as remote and stony as a face carved high
up on some icy mountain’s top.
“But I’m not just a man of the military,” Ian said. “That was the mistake Kenebuck made, too. That was why he thought that stripped of military elements, I’d be easy to kill.”
Tyburn, looking at him, felt a chill run down his spine as icy as wind off a glacier.
“Then, in heaven’s name,” cried Tyburn. “What are you?”
Ian looked from his far distance down into Tyburn’s eyes and the sadness rang as clear in his voice finally, as iron-shod heels on barren rock.
“I am a man of war,” said Ian, softly.
With that, he turned and went on; and Tyburn saw him black against the winter-bright sky, looming over all the other departing passengers, on his way to board the spaceship.
The Plume and the Sword
by Sandra Miesel
“Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and origin of marvels.”
Goya
In life even as in art, the harmony of opposites is Gordon R. Dickson’s constant goal. This man who unifies opposing principles in his fiction unites within himself the most disparate extremes of frivolity and keenness—the plume and sword alike are his to wear.
In person, Dickson’s fluffiness has always made the greatest impression on the greatest number of people. He is everyone’s favorite conventioneer. (During his forty years in sf fandom, he has attended hundreds of conventions.) His image as the jolly party-goer, singing and playing the guitar until dawn, led Ben Bova to parody My Darling Clementine in Dickson’s honor. The chorus concludes: “Science fiction is his hobby/ But his main job’s having fun.”
Dickson is a veteran trencherman, a mainstay of epic dinner parties, but he has also been known to spend more time selecting the wine than eating the meal. His bizarre preference for drinking milk, juice, coffee, beer, and Bloody Marys at the same breakfast has been cause for comment since his student days at the University of Minnesota thirty years ago. Lately, allergies (including—alas—a mild one to wine) and a desire for waistline trimness have tempered these habits somewhat, but Dickson’s zest for living remains un-
commonly brisk.
Yet such pleasures are the least components of his joie de vivre. Dickson has a capacity for wonder that will not be worn out. It has been claimed that no one else can say “golly” quite as joyfully as he does. (Dickson’s habit of burbling along in innocent schoolboy exclamations once inspired some of his friends to stage a “Gordon R. Dickson Murfle-Alike Contest.”)
Enthusiasm colors everything he does. He not only admires fine craftsmanship, he quizzes craftsmen on the tools, techniques, and attitudes that support their skills. (How many men would demand to see the wrong side of embroidered fabric?) He is always eager for new knowledge and fresh experiences. Recent endeavors include lessons in bagpipe-playing and in akido. Moreover, he encourages the same adventurous-ness in others. His friends have found themselves wielding knives, making lace, or writing novels for the first time at his urging.
Dickson describes himself as “a galloping optimist,” unshakably certain that “man’s future is onward and upward.’” Right must inevitably triumph. He admits that human beings may not be quite perfectible— “Perfectible is a little too good to be true—but improvable, tremendously improvable by their own strength.”
Idealism gives him confidence in his own potential as well as that of his species. After watching his own Childe Cycle gradually move from rejection to acceptance, after observing fractious humans slowly struggle to build things together, Dickson concludes that creativity can overcome all obstacles. It is the only sure key to progress.
This same confidence in creativity makes him patient with other people, no matter how unpromising
they may seem. He is among the most approachable of all sf professionals. For instance, few others would have taken the time to explain the elementary rules of prosody to an aspiring ballad writer and then been on hand afterwards to applaud her first acceptable efforts. Dickson’s forbearance, skill, and above all, his respect for even the grubbiest amateur’s dignity, have made him a superb mentor for young authors who are serious about their art. (Among the newer names in sf who have at times listened to him are Joe Haldeman, Robert Aspirin, and Lynn Abbey.) Dickson tends to downplay his influence because he believes that “fine teaching comes as automatically as breathing” to experienced writers. Yet his inner nature is revealed by the positive effects he has on those around him. For the past three decades his encouragement of talent and his support of professionalism have worked like buds of yeast to leaven the sf field.
One thing Dickson will not endure patiently is a shoddy performance. His Victorian upbringing imbued him with high standards of excellence. He has a born aristocrat’s awareness of his own prerogatives, even in trivial matters: woe to the careless waiter who serves Dickson’s vichyssoise improperly chilled. But his special ire is reserved for time-wasters too lazy to develop their own talents. “Some people,” he complains, “like my advice so much, they frame it and hang it on the wall instead of using it.” Fortunately such failures are rare. Most of those who beseech his advice or cry on his broad shoulders put the experience to good use.