“So everyone becomes a law unto himself,” Merrick concluded,
“No, the law is there, implicitly, and it applies to everyone, but you have to learn how to read it,” Bernard frowned. That hadn’t come out the way he had intended. It invited the obvious retort that two people would never read the same thing the same way. The difference was that the Chironians could make it work. “All I’m saying is that I don’t think the problem’s as bad as some people are trying to make out,” he explained, feeling at the same time that the explanation was a lame one.
“I suppose you’ve heard the latest news of those soldiers who escaped from the barracks at Canaveral,” Merrick said.
“Yes, but that situation can’t last. If the Army doesn’t get them soon, the Chironians will.”
Padawski and his followers had somehow shown up on the far side of the Medichironian, which was only sparsely settled, and seemed to he settling in as bandits in the hills. What a bandit would hope to achieve on a world like Chiron was hard to see, but revenge against Chironians seemed to have a lot to do with it; two isolated homes had been invaded, ransacked, and looted, in the course of which five Chironians and one soldier had been killed, Three Chironians, including a fifteen-year-old girl, had been raped. The Army was scouring the area from the air and with search parties on foot, but so far without success ~-the renegades were well trained in the arts of concealment. Satellites were of limited use if they didn’t know exactly where to look, especially where rough terrain was involved.
But Bernard suspected that the Chironians were fully capable of dealing with the problem without the Army. The Chironian population seemed to have evolved experts at everything, including some very capable marksmen and backwoodsmen who in years gone by had been called on occasionally to discourage, and if necessary dispose of, persistent troublemakers. Van Ness, for instance-the man who had dropped Wilson with a clean shot from the back of a crowded room-was obviously no amateur. It had turned out that Van Ness besides being a cartographer and timber supplier, was also an experienced hunter and explorer and taught ‘armed- and unarmed-combat skills at the academy in Franklin that Jay had visited. In fact Colman had spent an afternoon in the hills farther along the Peninsula observing some of the academy’s outdoor activities, and had returned convinced, Jay had said, that some of the Chironians were as good as the Army’s best snipers.
But Merrick didn’t seem inclined to pursue that side of the matter. “Nevertheless Chironians are getting killed,” he said. “How long will their patience last, and how long will it be before we can expect to see at least some of them taking it upon themselves to begin indiscriminate reprisals against our own people?-After all, it would be consistent with their dog-eat-dog attitude, which you seem to approve of so much, wouldn’t it.”
“I never said anything of the kind. The whole point is that they are no~ indiscriminate. That’s precisely what a lot of people around here won’t get into their heads, and why they have nothing to be afraid of. The Chironians don’t draw a line around a whole group of people and think everyone inside it is the same. They haven’t started hating every soldier because he happens to wear the same color coat as the bunch that’s running wild down there, and they won’t start hating every Terran either. They don’t think that way.”
Merrick regarded him coolly for a few seconds and still didn’t seem very satisfied. “Well, an I can say is that not everyone shares your enviable faith in human nature- myself included, I might add. The official policy conveyed to me from the Directorate, which it is your duty as well as mine to support irrespective of our own personal views,
“Is that the possibility of violent reaction from the Chironians cannot be dismissed. Therefore we must allow for such an eventuality in considering the future.”
Bernard spread his hands resignedly. “Very well, I can seethe sense in being prepared. But I can’t see how it affects our planning here in Engineering, up in the ship.”