In the buoyancy of spirit which resulted from a plan of campaign, any plan of campaign, Ardmore failed to remember his own decision that what was required was a sixth column, an underground, or at least, unsuspected organization which would demoralize the enemy from within.
This present plan was not such a one, but an essentially military plan.
He began to think of himself as, if not Napoleon, at least as a modern Swamp Rat, or Sandino, striking through the night at the professional soldiers and fading away.
But Mitsui was right.
The television receiver was used regularly, with full recording, to pick up anything that the overlords had to broadcast to their slaves. It had become something of a custom to meet in the common room at eight in the evening to listen to the regular broadcast in which new orders were announced to the population. Ardmore encouraged it; the “hate session” it inspired was, he believed, good for morale.
Two nights before the projected raid they were gathered as usual. The ugly, broad face of the usual propaganda artist was quickly replaced by another and older PanAsian whom he introduced as the “heavenly custodian of peace and order.” The older man came quickly to the point. The American servants of a provincial government had committed the hideous sin of rebelling against their wise rulers and had captured the sacred person of the governor and held him prisoner in his own palace. The soldiers of the heavenly emperor had brushed aside the insane profaners in the course of which the governor had most regrettably gone to his ancestors.
A period of mourning was announced, commencing at once, which would be inaugurated by permitting the people of the province to expiate the sins of their cousins. The television scene cut from the room from which he spoke.
It came to rest on great masses of humanity, men, women, children, huddled, jammed, behind barbed wire. The pick-up came down close enough to permit the personnel of the Citadel to see the blind misery on the faces of the crowd, the wept-out children, the mothers carrying babies, the helpless fathers.
They did not have to watch those faces long. The pick-up panned over the packed mob, acre on acre of helpless human animals, then returned to a steady close-up of one section.
They used the epileptigenic ray on them. Now they no longer resembled anything human. It was, instead, as if tens of thousands of monstrous chickens had had their necks wrung all at once and had been thrown into the same pen to jerk out their death spasms. Bodies bounded into the air in bone-breaking, spine-smashing fits. Mothers threw their infants from them, or crushed them in uncontrollable, viselike squeeze.
The scene cut back to the placid face of the Asiatic dignitary. He announced with what seemed to be regret in his voice that penance for sins was not sufficient, it was necessary also to be educational, in this case to the extent of one in every thousand.
Ardmore did a quick calculation in his head. A hundred fifty thousand people! It was unbelievable.
But it was soon believed. The pick-up cut again, this time to a residential street in an American city. It followed a squad of PanAsian soldiers into the living room of a family. They were gathered about a television receiver, plainly stunned by what they had just seen. The mother was huddling a young girl child to her shoulder, trying to quiet her hysteria. They seemed stupefied, rather than frightened, when the soldiers burst into their home. The father produced his card without argument; the squad leader compared it with a list, and the soldiers attended to him.
They had evidently been instructed to use a method of killing that was not pretty.
Ardmore shut off the receiver. “The raid is off,” he announced. “Go to bed, all of you. And each of you take a sleeping pill tonight. That’s an order!”
They left at once. No one said anything. After they were gone, Ardmore turned the receiver back on and watched it through to the end. Then he sat alone for a long time, trying to get his thoughts back into coherence. Those who order sleeping drafts won’t take them.