“Listen to me,” he said. “You’ve been beautifully /equipped by gene selection and training to be a
Select—but not to be anything else. Why can’t you understand that interstellar intrigue isn’t your dish?”
“Interstellar … what’re you talking about?” she demanded.
“Oh, climb down for a moment,” he said wearily— and more youngly man he had said anything since leaving home. “William is your enemy. You understand that much; but you don’t understand why or how, although you think you do. And neither do I,” he confessed, “although I’ve got a notion. But the way for you to confound William isn’t by playing his game. Play your own. Be the Select of Kultis. As the Select, you’re untouchable.”
“If,” she said, “you’ve nothing more to say than that—”
“All right,” he took a step toward her. “Listen, then. William was making an attempt to compromise you. Killien was his tool—”
“How dare you?” she erupted.
“How dare I?” he echoed wearily. “Is there anyone in this interstellar community of madmen and madwomen who doesn’t know that phrase and use it to me on sight? I dare because it’s the truth.”
“Hugh,” she stormed at him, “was a fine, honest man. A soldier and a gentleman! Not a … a—”
“Mercenary?” he inquired. “But he was.”
“He was a career officer,” she replied haughtily. “There’s a difference.”
“No difference.” He shook his head. “But you wouldn’t understand that. Mercenary isn’t necessarily the dirty word somebody taught you it is. Never mind. Hugh Killien was worse than any name you might be mistaken enough to call me. He was a fool.”
“Oh!” she whirled about.
He took her by one elbow and turned her around. She came about in shocked surprise. Somehow, it had never occurred to her to imagine how strong he was. Now, the sudden realization of her physical helplessness in his hands shocked her into abrupt and unusual silence.
“Listen to the truth, then,” he said. “William dangled you like an expensive prize before Killien’s eyes. He fed him full of the foolish hope that he could have you—the Select of Kultis. He made it possible for you to visit Hugh that night at Faith Will Succour—yes,” he said, at her gasp, “I know about that. I saw you there with him. He also made sure Hugh would meet you, just as he made sure that the Orthodox soldiers would attack.”
“I don’t believe it—” she managed.
“Don’t you be a fool, too,” Donal said, roughly. “How else do you think an overwhelming force of Orthodox elite troops happened to move in on the encampment at just the proper time? What other men than fanatic Orthodox soldiery could be counted on to make sure none of the men in our unit escaped alive? There was supposed to be only one man to escape from that affair—Hugh Killien, who would be in a position then to make a hero’s claim on you. You see how much your good opinion is worth?”
“Hugh wouldn’t—”
“Hugh didn’t,” interrupted Donal. “As I said, he was a fool, A fool but a good soldier. Nothing more was needed for William. He knew Hugh would be fool enough to go and meet you, and good soldier enough not to throw his life away when he saw his command was destroyed. As I say, he would have come back alone—and a hero.”
“But you saw through this!” she snapped. “What’s your secret? A pipeline to the Orthodox camp?”
“Surely it was obvious from the situation; a command exposed, a commandant foolishly making a love-tryst in a battleground, that something like the attack was inevitable. I simply asked myself what kind of troops would be used and how they might be detected. Orthodox troops eat nothing but native herbs, cooked in the native fashion. The odor of their cooking permeates their clothing. Any veteran of a Harmony campaign would be able to recognize their presence the same way.”
“If his nose was sensitive enough. If he knew where to look for them—”
“There was only one logical spot—”
“Anyway,” she said coldly. “This is beside the point. The point is”—suddenly she fired up before him—”Hugh wasn’t guilty. You said it yourself. He was, even according to you, only a fool! And you had him murdered!”
He sighed in weariness.
“The crime,” he said, “for which Commandant Killien was executed was that of misleading his men and abandoning them in enemy territory. It was that he paid with his life for.”
“Murderer!” she said. “Get out!”
“But,” he said, staring baffledly at her, “I’ve just explained.”
“You’ve explained nothing,” she said, coldly, and from a distance. “I’ve heard nothing but a mountain of lies, lies, about a man whose boots you aren’t fit to clean. Now, will you get out, or do I have to call the hotel guard?”
“You don’t believe—?” He stared at her, wide-eyed.
“Get out.” She turned her back on him. Like a man in a daze, he turned himself and walked blindly to the door and numbly out into the corridor. Still walking, he shook his head, like a person who finds himself in a bad dream and unable to wake up.
What was this curse upon him? She had not been lying—she was not capable of doing so successfully. She had really heard his explanation and—it had meant nothing to her. It was all so obvious, so plain—the machinations of William, the stupidity of Killien. And she had not seen it when Donal pointed it out to her. She, of all people, a Select of Kultis!
Why? Why? Why?
Scourged by the devils of self-doubt and loneliness, Donal moved off down the corridor, back in the direction of Gait’s hotel.
AIDE-DE-CAMP
They met in the office of Marshal Gait, in his Freiland home; and the enormous expanse of floor and the high vaulted ceiling dwarfed them as they stood three men around a bare desk.
“Captain Lludrow, this is my Aide, Commandant Donal Graeme,” said Gait, brusquely. “Donal, this is Russ Lludrow, Patrol Chief of my Blue Patrol.”
“Honored, sir,” said Donal, inclining his head.
“Pleased to meet you, Graeme,” answered Lludrow. He was a fairly short, compact man in his early forties, very dark of skin and eye.
“You’ll trust Donal with all staff information,” said Gait. “Now, what’s your reconnaissance and intelligence picture?”
“There’s no doubt about it, they’re planning an expeditionary landing on Oriente.” Lludrow turned to- ward the desk and pressed buttons on the map keyboard. The top of the desk cleared to transparency and they looked through at a non-scale map of the Sir-ian system. “Here we are,” he said, stabbing his finger at roe world of Freiland, “here’s New Earth”—his finger moved to Freiland’s sister planet—”and here’s Oriente”—his finger skipped to a smaller world inward toward me sun—”in the positions they’ll be in, relative to one another twelve days from now. You see, we’ll have the sun between the two of us and also almost between each of our worlds and Oriente. They couldn’t have picked a more favorable tactical position.”
Gait grunted, examining the map. Donal was watching Lludrow with quiet curiosity. The man’s accent betrayed him for a New Earthman, but here he was high up on the Staff of Freiland’s fighting forces. Of course, the two Sirian worlds were natural allies, being on the same side as Old Earth against the Venus-Newton-Cassida group; but simply because they were so close, there was a natural rivalry in some things, and a career officer from one of them usually did best on his home world.
“Don’t like it,” said Gait, finally. “It’s a fool stunt from what I can see. The men they land will have to wear respirators; and what the devil do they expect to do with their beachhead when they establish it? Oriente’s too close to the sun for terraforming, or we would have done it from here long ago.”
“It’s possible,” said Lludrow, calmly, “they could intend to mount an offensive from there against our two planets here.”
“No, no,” Gait’s voice was harsh and almost irritable. His heavy face loomed above the map. “That’s as wild a notion as ierraforming Orients. They couldn’t keep a base there supplied, let alone using it to attack two large planets with fully established population and industry. Besides, you don’t conquer civilized worlds. That’s a maxim.”
“Maxims can become worn out, though,” put in Donal.
“What?” demanded Gait, looking up. “Oh— Donal. Don’t interrupt us now. From the looks of it,” he went on to Lludrow, “it strikes me as nothing so much as a live exercise—you know what I mean.”
Lludrow nodded—as did Donal unconsciously. Live exercises were something that no planetary Chief of Staff admitted to, but every military man recognized. They were actual small battles provoked with a handy enemy either for the purpose of putting a final edge on troops in training, or to keep that edge on troops that had been too long on a standby basis. Gait, almost alone among me Planetary Commanders of his time, was firmly set against mis action, not only in theory, but in practice. He believed it more honest to hire his troops out, as in the recent situation on Harmony, when they showed signs of going stale. Donal privately agreed with him; although mere was always the danger that when you hired troops out, they lost the sense of belonging to you, in particular, and were sometimes spoiled through mismanagement.