I remembered what was said about his people from that small, cold, stony-mountained world: that if the Dorsai chose to withdraw their fighting men from the services of all the other worlds, and challenge those other worlds, not the combined might of the rest of civilization could stand against them. I had never really believed that before. I had never even really thought much about it. But sitting there just then, because of what was happening in the room, suddenly it became real to me. I could feel the knowledge, cold as a wind blowing on me off a glacier, that it was true; and then he answered my question.
“Because,” said Kensie Graeme, “anything like that is specifically prohibited by Article Two of the Mercenaries’ Code.”
Then he broke out abruptly into a smile and what I had just felt in the room withdrew. I breathed again.
“Well,” he said, putting his glass down empty on the desk, “how about joining us in the Officers’ Mess for something to eat?”
I had dinner with them and the meal was very pleasant. They wanted to put me up for the night, but I could feel myself being pulled back to that cold, joyless compound near Joseph’s Town, where all that waited for me was a sort of cold and bitter satisfaction at being among my enemies.
I went back.
It was about eleven P.M. when I drove through the gate of the compound and parked, just as a figure came out of the entrance to Jamethon’s headquarters. The square was dim-lighted with only a few spotlights about the walls, their light lost in the rain-wet pavement. For a moment I did not recognize the figure-and then I saw it was Jamethon.
He would have passed by me at some little distance, but I got out of my car and went to meet him. He stopped when I stepped in front of him.
“Mr. Olyn,” he said evenly. In the darkness I could not make out the expression of his face.
“I’ve got a question to ask,” I said, smiling in the darkness.
“It’s late for questions.”
“This won’t take long.” I strained to catch the look on his face, but it was all in shadow. “I’ve been visiting the Exotic camp. Their commander’s a Dor-sai. 1 suppose you know that?”
“Yes.” I could barely see the movement of his lips.
“We got to talking. A question came up and I thought I’d ask you, Commandant. Do you ever order your men to kill prisoners?”
An odd, short silence came between us. Then he answered.
“The killing or abuse of prisoners of war,” he said without emotion, “is forbidden by Article Two of the Mercenaries’ Code.”
“But you aren’t mercenaries here, are you? You’re native troops in service to your own True Church and Elders.”
“Mr. Olyn,” he said, while I still strained without success to make out the expression of his shadowed face-and it seemed that the words came slowly, though the tone of the voice that spoke them remained as calm as ever, “My Lord has set me to be His servant and -a leader among men of war. In neither of those tasks will I fail Him.”
And with that he turned, his face still shadowed and hidden from me, and passed around me and went on.
Alone, I went back inside to my quarters, undressed and lay down on the hard and narrow bed they had given me. The rain outside had stopped at last. Through my open, unglazed window I could see a few stars showing.
I lay there getting ready to sleep and making mental notes on what I would need to do next day. The meeting with Padma had jolted me sharply. Strangely, somehow I had almost managed to forget that his calculations of human actions could apply to me personally. It shook me now to be reminded of that. I would have to find out more about how much his science of ontogenetics knew and could predict. If necessary, from Padma himself. But I would start first with ordinary reference sources.
No one, I thought, would ordinarily entertain the fantastic thought that one man like myself could destroy a culture involving the populations of two worlds. No one, except perhaps a Padma. What I knew, he with his calculations might have discovered. And that was that the Friendly worlds of Harmony and Association were facing a decision that would mean life or death to their way of living. A very small thing could tip the scales they weighed on. I went over my plan, nursing it in my mind.
For there was a new wind blowing between the stars.
Two hundred years before we had all been men of Earth-Old Earth, the mother planet which was my native soil. One people.
Then, with the movement out to new worlds, the human race had “splintered,” to use an Exotic term. Every small social fragment and psychological type had drawn apart by itself, and joined others like it and progressed toward specialized types. Until we had half a dozen fragments of human types-the warnor on the Dorsal, the philosopher on the Exotic worlds, the hard scientist on Newton, Cassida and Venus, and so forth.
Isolation had bred specific types. Then a growing intercommunication between the younger worlds, now established, and an ever-increasing rate of technological advance had forced specialization. The trade between the worlds was the trade of skilled minds. Generals from the Dorsai were worth their exchange rate in psychiatrists from the Exotics. Communications men like myself from Old Earth bought spaceship designers from Cassida. And so it had been for the last hundred years.
But now the worlds were drifting together. Economics was fusing the race into one whole again. And the struggle on each world was to gain the advantages of that fusion while holding on to as much as possible of their own ways.
Compromise was necessary-but the harsh, stiff-necked Friendly religion forbade compromise and had made many enemies. Already public opinion moved against the Friendlies on other worlds. Discredit them, smear them, publicly here in this campaign, and they would not be able to hire out their soldiers. They would lose the balance of trade they needed to hire the skilled specialists trained by the special facilities of other worlds, and which they needed to keep their own two poor-in-natural-resources worlds alive. They would die.
As young Dave had died. Slowly. In the dark.
In the darkness now, as I thought of it, it rose up before me once again. It had been only midafternoon when we were taken prisoner, but by the time the
Groupman came with his orders for our guards to move up, the sun was almost down.
I remembered how, after they left, after it was all over and I was left alone, I crawled to the bodies hi the clearing. And how I had found Dave among them; and he was not quite gone. He was wounded in the body and I could not stop the bleeding.
It would not have helped if I had, they told me afterward. But then it seemed that it would have. So I tried. But finally I gave up and by that time it was quite dark. I only held him and did not know he was dead until he began to grow cold. And that was when I had begun to change into what my uncle had always tried to make me. I felt myself die inside. Dave and my sister were to have been my family, the only family I had ever had hopes of keeping. Instead, I could only sit there in the darkness, holding him and hearing the blood from his red-soaked clothing falling drop by drop, slowly, on the dead variform oak leaves beneath us.
I lay there now in the Friendly compound, unable to sleep and remembering. And after a while I heard the soldiers marching, forming in the square for midnight service.
I lay on my back, listening to them. Then- marching feet stopped at last. The single window of my room was over my bed, high in the wall against which the left side of my cot was set. It was unglazed and the night air with its sounds came freely through it along with the dim light from the square which painted a pale rectangle on the opposite wall of my room. I lay watching that rectangle and listening to the service outside; and I heard the duty officer lead them in a prayer for worthiness. After that they sang their battle hymn again, and I lay hearing it this time all the way through.
Soldier, ask not-now, or ever, Where to war your banners go. Anarch’s legions all surround us. Strike-and do not count the blow.
Glory, honor, praise and profit, Are but toys of tinsel worth. Render up your work, unasking, Leave the human clay to earth.
Blood and sorrow, pain unending, Are the portion of us all. Grasp the naked sword, opposing. Gladly in the battle fall.