Dorsai!

Mercenary III

Returning again up the corridor toward the bow of the ship, Donal allowed himself to wonder, a little wistfully, about this succubus of his own strange difference from other people. He had thought to leave it behind with his cadet uniform. Instead, it seemed, it continued to ride with him, still perched on his shoulders. Always it had been this way. What seemed so plain, and simple and straightforward to himself, had always struck others as veiled, torturous, and involved. Always he had been like a stranger passing through a town, the ways of whose people were different, and who looked on him with a lack of understanding amounting to suspicion. Their language failed on the doorstep of his motives and could not enter the lonely mansion of his mind. They said “enemy” and “friend”; they said “strong” and “weak” — “them” and “us”. They set up a thousand arbitrary classifications and distinctions which he could not comprehend, convinced as he was that all people were only people — and there was very little to choose between them. Only, you dealt with them as individuals, one by one; and always remembering to be patient. And if you did this successfully, then the larger, group things all came out right.

Turning again into the entrance of the lounge, he discovered — as he had half-expected to — the young Newtonian ArDell Montor, slumped in a float by one end of the bar that had made its appearance as soon as the dinner tables had been taken up into the walls. A couple of other small, drinking groups sparsely completed the inhabitants of the lounge — but none of these were having anything to do with Montor. Donal walked directly to him; and Montor, without moving, lifted the gaze of his dark eyes to watch Donal approach.

“Join you?” said Donai.

“Honored,” replied the other — not so much thickly as slowly, from the drink inside him. “Thought I might like to talk to you.” His fingers crept out over the buttons on the bar-pad next to him. “Drink?”

“Dorsai whiskey,” said Donal. Montor pressed. A second later a small transparent goblet, full, rose to the bartop. Donal took it and sipped cautiously. The drinking the night he had attained his majority had acquainted him with the manner in which alcohol affected him; and he had made a private determination never to find himself drunk again. It is a typical matter of record with him, that he never did. Raising his eyes from the glass, he found the Newtonian staring steadily at him with his eyes unnaturally clear, lost, and penetrating.

“You’re younger than I,” said ArDell. “Even if I don’t look it. How old do you think I am?”

Donal looked him over curiously. Montor’s face, for all its lines of weariness and dissipation, was the scarcely mature visage of a late adolescent — a situation to which his shock of uncombed hair and the loose-limbed way he sprawled in his float, contributed.

“A quarter of a standard century,” said Donal.

‘Thirty-three years absolute,” said ArDell. “I was a school-child, a monk, until I was twenty-nine. Do you think I drink too much?”

“I think there’s no doubt about it,” answered Donal.

“I agree with you,” said ArDell, with one of his sudden snorts of laughter. “I agree with you. There’s no doubt about it — one of the few things in this God-abandoned universe about which there is no doubt. But that’s not what I was hoping to talk to you about.”

“What was that?” Donal tasted his glass of whiskey again.

“Courage,” said ArDell, looking at him with an empty, penetrating glance. “Have you got courage?”

“It’s a necessary item for a soldier,” said Donal. “Why do you ask?”

“And no doubts? No doubts?” ArDell swirled the golden drink in his tall tumbler and took a swallow from it. “No secret fears that when the moment comes your legs will weaken, your heart will pound, you’ll turn and run?”

“I will not, of course, turn and run,” said Donal. “After all, I’m a Dorsai. As for how I’ll feel — all I can say is, I’ve never felt the way you describe. And even if I did—”

Above their heads a single mellow chime sounded, interrupting.

“Phase shift in one standard hour and twenty minutes,” announced a voice. “Phase shift in one standard hour and twenty minutes. Passengers are advised to take their medication now and accomplish the shift while asleep, for their greatest convenience.”

“Have you swallowed a pill yet?” asked ArDell.

“Not yet,” said Donal.

“But you will?”

“Of course.” Donal examined him with interest. “Why not?”

“Doesn’t taking medication to avoid the discomfort, of a phase shift strike you as a form of cowardice?” asked ArDell. “Doesn’t it?”

“That’s foolish,” said Donal. “Like saying it’s cowardly to wear clothes to keep you warm and comfortable, or to eat, to keep from starving. One is a matter of convenience; the other is a matter of — he thought for a second — “duty.”

“Courage is doing your duty?”

“…In spite of what you personally might want. Yes,” said Donal.

“Yes,” said ArDell, thoughtfully. “Yes.” He replaced his empty glass on the bar and pressed for a refill. “I thought you had courage,” he said, musingly, watching the glass sink, fill, and begin to re-emerge.

“I am a Dorsai,” said Donal.

“Oh, spare me the glories of careful breeding!” said ArDel], harshly, picking up his now-full glass. As he turned back to face Donal, Donal saw the man’s face was tortured. “There’s more to courage than that. If it was only in your genes—” he broke off suddenly, and leaned toward Donal. “Listen to me,” he almost whispered. “I’m a coward.”

“Are you sure?” said Donal, levelly. “How do you know?”

“I’m frightened sick,” whispered ArDell. “Sick-frightened of the universe. What do you know about the mathematics of social dynamics?”

“It’s a predicative system of mathematics, isn’t it?” said Donal. “My education didn’t lie in that direction.”

“No, no!” said ArDell, almost fretfully. “I’m talking about the statistics of social analysis, and their extrapolation along lines of population increase and development.” He lowered his voice even further. “They approach a parallel with the statistics of random chance!”

“I’m sorry,” said Donal. “That means nothing to me.”

ArDell gripped Donal’s arm suddenly with one surprisingly strong hand.

“Don’t you understand?” he murmured. “Random chance provides for every possibility — including dissolution. It must come, because the chance is there. As our social statistics grow into larger figures, we, too, entertain the possibility. In the end, it must come. We must destroy ourselves. There is no other alternative. And all because the universe is too big a suit of clothes for us to wear. It gives us room to grow too much, too fast. We will reach a statistically critical mass — and then,” he snapped his fingers, “the end!”

“Well, that’s a problem for the future,” said Donal. But then, because he could not help reacting to the way the other man was feeling, he added, more gently, “Why does it bother you, so much?”

“Why, don’t you see?” said ArDell. “If it’s all to go — just like that — as if it never has been, then what was the use of it all? What’s to show for our existence? I don’t mean things we built — they decay fast enough. Or knowledge. That’s just a copying down from an open book into our own language. It has to be those things that the universe didn’t have to begin with and that we brought to it. Things like love, and kindness — and courage.”

“If that’s the way you feel,” said Donal, gently withdrawing his arm from the other’s grasp, “why drink this way?”

“Because I am a coward,” said ArDell. “I feel it out there, all the time, this enormousness that is the universe. Drinking helps me shut it out — that Godawful knowledge of what it can do to us. That’s why I drink. To take the courage I need out of a bottle, to do the little things like passing through phase shift without medication.”

“Why,” said Donal, almost tempted to smile. “What good would that do?”

“It’s facing it, in a little way,” ArDell fixed him with his dark and pleading eyes. “It’s saying, in one little instance — go ahead, rip me to the smallest shreds you can manage, spread me over your widest limits. I can take it.”

Donal shook his head.

“You don’t understand,” said ArDell, sinking back in his float. “If I could work, I wouldn’t need the alcohol. But I’m walled away from work nowadays. It’s not that way with you. You’ve got your job to do; and you’ve got courage — the real kind. I thought maybe I could… well, never mind. Courage wouldn’t be transferable, anyway.”

“Are you going to Harmony?” asked Donal.

“Whither my Prince goes, there go I,” said ArDell, and snorted his laugh again. “You should read my contract, sometime.” He turned back to the bar. “Another whiskey?”

“No,” said Donal, standing up. “If you’ll excuse me—”

“I’ll see you again,” muttered ArDell, keying for another drink. “I’ll be seeing you.”

“Yes,” said Donal. “Until then.”

“Until then,” ArDell lifted his newly filled glass from the bar. The chime sounded again overhead, and the voice reminded them that only seventy-odd minutes remained before shift-time. Donal went out.

Half an hour later, after he had gone back to his own room for one more careful rereading and study of Anea’s contract, Donal pressed the button on the door of the stateroom of William, Prince and Chairman of the Board, on Ceta. He waited.

“Yes?” said the voice of William, over his head.

“Donal Graeme, sir,” said Donal. “If you aren’t busy—”

“Oh, of course — Donal. Come in!” The door swung open before him and Donal entered.

William was sitting on a plain float before a small deskboard holding a pile of papers and a tiny portable secretary. A single light glowed directly above him and the deskboard, silvering his gray hair. Donal hesitated, hearing the door click to behind him.

“Find a seat somewhere,” said William, without looking up from his papers. His fingers flickered over the keys of the secretary. “I have some things to do.”

Donal turned about in the gloom outside the pool of light, found an armchair float and sat down in it. William continued for some minutes, scanning through his papers, and making notes on the secretary.

After a while he shoved the remaining papers aside and the deskboard, released, drifted with its burden to over against a farther wall. The single overhead light faded and a general illumination flooded the cabin.

Donal blinked at the sudden light. William smiled.

“And now,” he said, “what’s the nature of your business with me?”

Donal blinked, stared, and blinked again.

“Sir?” he said.

“I think we can avoid wasting time by ignoring pretenses,” said William, still in his pleasant voice. “You pushed yourself on us at the table because you wanted to meet someone there. It was hardly the marshal — your Dorsai manners could have found a better way than that. It was certainly not Hugh, and most unlikely to be ArDell. That leaves Anea; and she’s pretty enough, and you’re both young enough to do something that foolish… but, I think not, under the conditions.” William folded his lean fingers together, and smiled. “That leaves me.”

“Sir, I—” Donal started to stand up, with the stiffness of outraged dignity.

“No, no,” said William, gesturing him back. “Now it’d be foolish to leave, after going to all this trouble to get here, wouldn’t it?” His voice sharpened. “Sit down!”

Donal sat.

“Why did you want to see me?” asked William.

Donal squared his shoulders.

“All right,” he said. “If you want me to put it bluntly… I think I might be useful to you.”

“By which,” said William, “you think you might be useful to yourself, by tapping the till, as it were, of my position and authority — go on.”

“It so happened,” said Donal, “that I came into possession of something belonging to you.”

William extended his hand, without a word. After a second’s hesitation, Donal extracted Anea’s contract from his pocket and passed it over. William took it, unfolded it, and glanced over it. He laid it carelessly down on a little table beside him.

“She wanted me to get rid of it for her,” said Donal. “She wanted to hire me to dispose of it for her. Evidently she didn’t know how hard it is to destroy a sheet of the material contracts are made on.”

“But you took the job,” said William.

“I made no promises,” said Donal, painfully.

“But from the start, you intended to bring it straight to me.”

“I believe,” said Donal, “it’s your property.”

“Oh, of course,” said William. He smiled at Donal for a long moment. “You realize, of course,” he said, finally, “that I needn’t believe a word of what you’ve said. I only need to assume that you stole it yourself and later got cold feet about disposing of it — and dreamed up this cock-and-bull story in a attempt to sell it back to me. The-captain of this ship would be glad to put you under arrest at my word and hold you for trial as soon as we reach Harmony.”

A slight, cold, galvanic shiver ran down Donal’s spine.

“A Select of Kultis won’t lie under oath,” he said. “She—”

“I see no reason to involve Anea in this,” said William. “It could be all handled very conveniently without her. My statement against yours.”

Donal said nothing. William smiled again.

“You see,” said William, “the point I’m laboring to bring home to you. You happen not only to be venal, but a fool.”

“Sir!” the word shot from Donal’s lips. William waved a disinterested hand.

“Save your Dorsai rages for someone who’ll be impressed by them. I know as well as you do, you’ve no intention of attacking me. Possibly, if you were a different sort of Dorsai — but you’re not. You are, as I say, both venal and a fool. Accept these statements for the obvious facts they are; and we can get down to business.”

He looked at Donal. Donal said nothing.

“Very well, then,” went on William. “You came to me, hoping I could find you of some use. As it happens, I can. Anea is, of course, just a foolish young girl — but for her benefit, as well as my own, being her employer, we’ll have to see she doesn’t get into serious trouble. Now, she had confided in you once. She may again. If she does so — by no means discourage her. And to keep you available for such confidences,” William smiled again, quite good-humoredly, this time, “I believe I can find you a commission as Force-Leader, under Commandant Hugh Killien, when we touch down on Harmony. There is no reason why a military career shouldn’t go hand in hand with whatever other uses I can find for you.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Donal.

“Not at all—” A chime sounded over some hidden wall speaker. “Ab — phase shift in five minutes.” William picked up a small silver box from a table near his feet, and sprung it open. “Have you taken your medication, yet? Help yourself.”

He extended to Donal.

“Thank you, sir,” said Donal carefully. “I have.”

“Then,” said William, helping himself to a white tablet, and replacing the box. “I believe that is all.”

“I believe so, sir,” said Donal.

Donal inclined his head and went out. Stopping outside the stateroom door only long enough to take one of his own phase shift sedatives, he headed back toward his own stateroom. On the way, he stopped by the ship’s library to check out an information spool on the First Dissident Church, of Harmony; and this delayed him sufficiently so that he was passing down one of the long sectional corridors when the phase shift occurred.

He had been prudently asleep during those previous shifts he had gone through while outbound from Dorsai; and, of course, he had learned years ago what to expect. In addition, he was fully medicated; and the shift itself was over before it was really begun. In fact, it took place in no time, in no conceivable interval at all. Yet it had happened; and some inextinguishable recognizing part of him knew and remembered that he had been torn apart, down to the most fractional elements of his being, and spread to the wide universe and caught and collected and reassembled at some arbitrary point light-years from his destruction. And it was this memory, not the shift itself, that made him falter, for one short step, before he took up again his steady march back to his stateroom. And the memory would stay with him.

He continued on down the corridor; but he was far from having run his gauntlet for the day. As he reached the end of one section, Anea stepped out from the cross-bar corridor there that was the exact duplicate of the one, several sections down, where he first met her. Her green eyes were afire.

“You’ve been seeing him!” she snapped, barring his way.

“Seeing… oh, William,” he said.

“Don’t deny it.”

“Why should I?” Donal looked at her almost with wonder. “Surely, it’s nothing to make a secret about?”

She stared at him.

“Oh!” she cried. “You just don’t care for anything, do you? What did you do… about what I gave you?”

“I gave it back to its owner, of course,” said Donal. “There was no other sensible thing I could do.”

She turned suddenly so white that he almost reached out to catch her, certain she was about to faint. But she did no such womanish thing. Her eyes, as she stared at him, were shocked to enormity.

“Oh!” she breathed. “You… you traitor. You cheat!” and before he could make a move or say a word to stop her, she had whirled about and was running off down the corridor back in the direction from which she had come.

With a certain wry unhappiness — for, in spite of his rather low opinion of her common sense, he had really expected her to listen to his explanation — he took up his solitary walk to his stateroom. He traveled the rest of the way without meeting anyone. The corridors, in the aftermath of the phase shift were deserted by prudent passengers.

Only, passing a certain stateroom, he heard sounds of sickness from within; and, looking up, recognized the number on its door as one he had looked up just now on his recent trip to the library.

It was the stateroom of ArDell Montor; and that would be the man himself inside it now, unmedicated and racked by the passing of the phase shift, fighting his own long battle with the universe.