“That’s useful—we need men who can palaver with the dragons. What else?”
Don thought about the fact that he had been able to make his escape through the bush without disaster—but the Lieutenant knew that; it simply proved that he was truly a fog-eater in spite of his mixed background. He decided that Busby would not be interested in the details of his ranch school education. “Well, I can wash dishes.”
Busby grudged a faint smile. “That is unquestionably a soldierly virtue. Nevertheless, Harvey, I doubt if you’re suited. This won’t be parade-ground soldiering. We’ll live off the country and probably never get paid at all. It means going hungry, going dirty, always on the move. You not only risk being killed in action; if you are captured, you’ll be burned for treason.”
“Yes, sir. I figured that out last night.”
“And you still want to join?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hold up your right hand.”
Don did so. Busby continued. “Do you solemnly swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the Venus Republic against all enemies, domestic and foreign; and to serve faithfully in the armed forces of the Republic for the duration of this emergency unless sooner discharged by competent authority; and to obey the lawful orders of superior officers placed over you?”
Don took a deep breath. “I do.”
“Very well, soldier—get in the boat.”
“Yes, sir!”
There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted—but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service. More of the time he was reasonably content, though he would have denied this sincerely—he acquired considerable talent at the most common of soldiers’ pastimes, griping about the war, the weather, the food, the mud, the stupidities of high command. The old soldier can substitute for recreation, or even for rest or food, this ancient, conventional, and harmless form of literary art.
He learned the ways of the guerilla—to infiltrate without a sound, to strike silently, and to fade back into the dark and the mist before the alarm can be raised. Those who learned it lived; those who did not, died. Don lived. He learned other things—to sleep for ten minutes when opportunity offered, to come fully and quietly awake at a touch or a sound, to do without sleep for a night, or two night, or even three. He acquired deep lines around his mouth, lines beyond his years, and a white, puckered scar on his left forearm.
He did not stay long with Busby but was transferred to a company of gondola infantry operating between CuiCui and New London. They called themselves proudly “Marsten’s Raiders”; he was assigned as “true speech” interpreter for his outfit. While most colonials can whistle a few phrases of dragon talk—or, more usually, can understand a bit of a pidgin sufficient for buying and selling—few of them can converse freely in it. Don, for all his lack of practice during his years on Earth, had been taught it young and taught it well by a dragon who had taken an interest in him as a child. And both his parents used it as easily as they did Basic English; Don had been drilled in it by daily use at home until he was eleven.
The dragons were of great use to the resistance fighters; while not belligerents themselves their sympathies lay with the colonials—more accurately, they despised the Federation soldiers. The colonials had managed to make a home on Venus through getting along with the dragons—an enlightened self-interest policy instituted by Cyrus Buchanan himself. To a human born on Venus there was never any doubt that there existed another race—dragons—as intelligent, as wealthy, and as civilized as their own. But to the great majority of the Federation soldiers, new to the planet, the dragons were merely ugly, uncouth animals, incapable of speech and giving themselves airs, arrogating to themselves privileges that no animal had a right to claim.
This orientation cut below the conscious level; no general order issued to the Federation troops, no amount of disciplinary action for violations, could cope with it. It was stronger and less reasoned than any analogous Earthly trouble—white versus black, gentile versus Jew, Roman versus barbarian, or whatever—had ever been. The very officers issuing the orders could not feel the matter correctly; they were not Venus born. Even the governor’s prime political adviser, the shrewd and able Stanley Bankfield, could not really grasp that one does not ingratiate oneself with a dragon by (so to speak) patting him on the head and talking down.