Soldier, ask not

Chapter 6

Dave had never seen me before, of course. But Eileen must have described me, and it was plain he recognized my name the minute the Commandant turned him over to me. At that, though, he had sense enough not to ask me any foolish questions until we had made it back to Battle Headquarters and gotten rid of that Groupman guiding us.

As a result I had a chance to study him myself on the way in. He did not assay too highly on my first examination of him. He was smaller than I, and looked a good deal younger than the difference in our ages should have made him. He had one of those round, open faces under taffy-colored hair which seem to look boyish right up into middle age. About the only thing that I could see that he seemed to have in common with my sister was a sort of inborn innocence and gentleness-that innocence and gentleness of weak creatures who know they are too weak to fight for their rights and win, and so try to make the best of it by the willingness of their dependence on the good will of others.

Or maybe I was being harsh. I was no denizen of the sheepfold myself. You would rather find me outside, slinking along the fence and cocking a thoughtful eye at the inmates.

But it is true, Dave seemed nothing great to me as far as appearance and character were concerned. I do not think, either, that he was any great shakes mentally. He had been an ordinary programmer when Eileen had married him; and he had worked part time, and she full time, these last five years trying to get him through a Cassidan University schedule in shift mechanics. He had had three years yet of work to go when he fell below the seventy-percentile median on a competitive examination. It was his bad luck that this should happen just at that moment when Cassida was raising its levies for sale to New Earth in the present campaign to put down the North Partition rebels. Away he went, in uniform.

You might think that Eileen had immediately appealed to me for help. No such thing-though the fact that she had not, puzzled me, when I finally heard of it. Though it should not have. She told me, eventually, and the telling stripped my soul and left its bare bones for the winds of rage and madness to howl through. But that was later. Actually, the way I found out about Dave going with the levies for New Earth was because our uncle Mathias, quietly and unexpectedly, died; and I was required to get in touch with Eileen on Cassida about the estate.

Her small share of the estate (contemptuously, even sneeringly, Mathias had left the bulk of his considerable fortune to The Final Encyclopedia Project as testimony that he thought any project concerning Earth and Earthmen so futile that no help could make it succeed) was no use to her unless I could make a private deal for her with some Earth-working Cassidan who had a family back on Cassida. Only governments or great organizations could translate planetary wealth into the human work-contracts that were actually transferable from one world to another. It was so that I learned that Dave had already left her and his native world for the ruckus on New Earth.

Even then, Eileen did not ask me for help. It was I who thought of asking for Dave as my assistant during the campaign and went ahead with it, merely writing to let her know what I was doing. Now that I had begun the deal, I was not at all sure why, myself, and even a little uncomfortable about it, as when Dave tried to thank me, after we finally got rid of our guide and headed in toward Molon, the nearest large city behind the lines.

"Save it!" I snapped at him. "All I've done for you so far's been the easy part. You're going to have to go into those lines with me as a noncombatant, carrying no weapons. And to do that, you've got to have a pass signed by both sides. That isn't going to be easy, for someone who was laying the sights of his spring-rifle on Friendly soldiers less than eight hours ago!"

He shut up at that. He was abashed. He was plainly hurt by the fact that I wouldn't let him thank me. But it stopped him talking and that was all I cared about.

We got orders cut by his Battle Headquarters, assigning him permanently to me; and then finished our ride by platform into Molon, where I left him in a hotel room with my gear, explaining that I'd be back for him in the morning.

"I'm to stay in the room?" he asked, as I was leaving.

"Do what you want, damn it!" I said. "I'm not your Groupman. Just be here by nine in the morning, local time, when I get back."

I went out. It was only after I closed the door behind me that I realized both what was driving him and eating me. He thought we might spend a few hours getting to know each other as brothers-in-law, and something in me set my teeth on edge at the prospect. I'd save his life for him for Eileen's sake, but that was no reason why I had to associate with him.

New Earth and Freiland, as everyone knows, are brother planets under the sun of Sirius. That makes them close-not so close as Venus-Earth-Mars clumping, naturally-but close enough so that from orbit New Earth you can make orbit Freiland in a single shift jump with a good but not excellent statistical chance of reaching your goal with minimum error. For those, then, who aren't afraid of a little risk in travel between the worlds, you can go from one planet to the other in about an hour-half an hour up to orbit station, no time at all for the jump, and half an hour down to surface at the end of the trip.

That was the way I went, and two hours after leaving my brother-in-law, I was showing my hard-wangled invitation to the doorman at the entrance of the establishment of Hendrik Galt, First Marshal of Freiland's battle forces.

The invitation was to a party being held for a man not so well known then as he has since become, a Dorsai (as Galt of course was a Dorsai) Space Sub-Patrol Chief named Donal Graeme. This was Graeme's first emergence into the public eye. He had just completed an utterly foolhardy attack on the planetary defenses of Newton, with something like four or five ships-an attack that had been lucky enough to relieve Newtonian pressure on Oriente, an uninhabited sister world of Freiland and New Earth, and get Galt's planetary forces out of a bad tactical hole.

He was, I judged at the time, a wild-eyed military gambler of some sort-his kind usually were. But my business, happily, was not with him, anyway. It was with some of the influential people who should be at this party of his.

In particular, I wanted the co-signature of the Freiland News Services Department Chief on Dave's papers-not that this would imply any actual protection extended to my brother-in-law by the News Services. That type of protection was extended only to Guild members and, with reservations, to apprentices on trial like myself. But to the uninitiate, like a soldier in the field, it might well look as if News Service protection was implied. Then, in addition, I wanted the signature of someone ranking among the Friendly mercenaries, for Dave's protection, in case he and I should fall in with some of their soldiers on the battlefield during the campaign.

I found the News Services Department Chief, a reasonable pleasant Earthman named Nuy Snelling, without difficulty. He gave me no trouble about noting on Dave's pass that the News Services agreed to Dave's assisting me and signing the message.

"Of course you know," he said, "this isn't worth a hoot." He eyed me curiously, as he handed the pass back. "This Dave Hall some friend of yours?"

"Brother-in-law," I answered.

"Hmm," he said, raising his eyebrows. "Well, good luck." And he turned away to talk to an Exotic in blue robes - who, with a sudden shock, I recognized as Padma.

The shock was severe enough so that I committed an imprudence I had not been guilty of for several years, at least, that of speaking without thinking.

"Padma-OutBond!" I said, the words jolted from me. "What are you doing here?"

Snelling, stepping back so as to have both of us in view at once, raised his eyebrows again. But Padma answered before my superior in the Services could take me to task for a pretty obvious rudeness. Padma was under no compulsion to account to me for his whereabouts. But he did not seem to take offense.

"I could ask you the same thing, Tam," he said, smiling.

I had my wits back by that time.

"I go where the news is," I answered. It was the stock News Services answer. But Padma chose to take it literally.

"And, in a sense, so do I," he said. "Remember I spoke to you once about a pattern, Tam? This place and moment is a locus."

I did not know what he was talking about; but having begun the conversation, I could not let go of it easily.

"Is that so?" I said smiling. "Nothing to do with me, I hope?"

"Yes," he said. And all at once I was aware once more of his hazel eyes, looking at and deep into me. "But more with Donal Graeme."

"That's only fair, I suppose," I said, "since the party's in his honor." And I laughed, while trying to think of some excuse to escape. Padma's presence was making the skin crawl at the back of my neck. It was as if he had some occult effect on me, so that I could not think clearly when he was present. "By the way, whatever happened to that girl who brought me to Mark Torre's office that day? Lisa . . . Kant, I think her name was."

"Yes, Lisa," said Padma, his eyes steady on me. "She's here with me. She's my personal secretary now. I imagine you'll bump into her shortly. She's concerned about saving you."

"Saving him?" put in Snelling, lightly, but interestedly enough. It was his job, as it was the job of all full Guild members, to observe the Apprentices for anything that might affect their acceptability into the Guild.

"From himself," said Padma, his hazel eyes still watching me, as smoky and yellow as the eyes of a god or a demon.

"Then, I'd better see if I can't look her up myself and let her get on with it," I said lightly in my turn, grasping at the opportunity to get away. "I'll see you both later perhaps."

"Perhaps," said Snelling. And I went off.

As soon as I had lost myself in the crowd, I ducked toward one of the entrances to the stairways leading up to the small balconies that looked down around

the walls of the room, like opera boxes in a theater. It was no plan of mine to be trapped by that strange girl, Lisa Kant, whom I remembered with too much vividness anyway. Five years before, after the occasion at the Final Encyclopedia, I had been bothered, time and again, by the desire to go back to the Enclave and look her up. And, time and again, something like a fear had stopped me.

I knew what the fear was. Deep in me was the irrational feeling that the perception and ability I had been evolving for handling people, as I had first handled my sister in the library with Jamethon Black, and as I had later handled all who got in my path right up to Commandant Frane, earlier that same day and a world away - deep in me, I say, was the fear that something would rob me of this power in the face of any attempt of mine to handle Lisa Kant.

Therefore, I found a stairway and ran up it, onto a little, deserted balcony with a few chairs around a circular table. From here I should be able to spot Eldest Bright, Chief Elder of the Joint Church Council that ruled both Friendly worlds of Harmony and Association. Bright was a Militant - one of the ruling Friendly churchmen who believed most strongly in war as a means to any end - and he had been paying a brief visit to New Earth to see how the Friendly mercenaries were working out for their New Earth employers. A scribble from him on Dave's pass would be better protection for my brother-in-law from the Friendly troops than five Commands of Cassidan armor.

I spotted him, after only a few minutes of searching the crowd milling about fifteen feet below me. He was clear across the large room, talking to a white-haired man - a Venusian or Newtonian by the look of him. I knew the appearance of Eldest Bright, as I knew the appearance of most interstellarly newsworthy people on the sixteen inhabited worlds. Just because I had made my way this far and fast by my own special talents, did not mean I had not also worked to learn my job. But, in spite of my knowledge, my first sight of Eldest Bright was still a shock.

I had not realized how strangely powerful for a churchman he would look in the flesh. Bigger than myself, with shoulders like a barn door and -though he was middle-aged - a waist like a sprinter. He stood, dressed all in black, with his back to me and his legs a little spread, the weight of him on the balls of his feet like a trained fighter. Altogether, there was something about the man, like a black flame of strength, that at the same time chilled me and made me eager to match wits with him.

One thing was certain, he would be no Commandant Frane to dance eagerly at the end of a string of words.

I turned to go down to him - and chance stopped me. If it was chance. I shall never know for sure. Perhaps it was a hypersensitivity planted in me by Padma's remark that this place and moment was a locus in the human pattern of development to which he had responsibility. I had affected too many people myself by just such subtle but apposite suggestion, to doubt that it might have been done to me, in this case. But I suddenly caught sight of a little knot of people almost below me.

One of the group was William of Ceta, Chief Entrepreneur of that huge, commercial, low-gravity planet under the sun of Tau Ceti. Another was a tall, beautiful, quite good-looking girl named Anea Marlivana, who was the Select of Kultis for her generation, chief jewel of generations of Exotic breeding. There was also Hendrik Galt, massive in his Marshal's dress uniform, and his niece Elvine. And there was also another man, who could only be Donal Graeme.

He was a young man in the uniform of a Sub-Patrol Chief, an obvious Dorsai with the black hair and strange efficiency of movement that characterizes those people who are born to war. But he was small for a Dorsai - no taller than I would have been, standing next to him - and slim, almost unobtrusive. Yet he caught my eye out of all that group; and, in the same instant, glancing up, he saw me.

Our eyes met for a second. We were close enough so that I should have been able to see the color of his eyes - and that is what stopped me.

For their color was no color, no one color. They were gray, or green, or blue, depending on what shade you looked for in them. Graeme looked away again, almost in the same instant. But I was held, caught by the strangeness of eyes like that, in a moment of surprise and transferred attention; and the delay of that moment was enough.

When I shook myself out of my trance and looked back to where I had seen Eldest Bright, I discovered him now drawn away from the white-haired man by the appearance of an aide, a figure strangely familiar-looking to me in its shape and posture, who was talking animatedly to the Eldest of the Friendly Worlds.

And, as I still stood watching, Bright spun about on his heel; and, following the familiar-looking aide, went rapidly from the room through a doorway which I knew led to the front hall and the entrance to Galt's establishment. He was leaving and I would lose my chance at him. I turned quickly, to rush down the stairs from the balcony and follow him before he could get away.

But my way was blocked. My moment of transfixed staring at Donal Graeme had tripped me up. Just coming up the stairs and reaching the balcony as I turned to leave was Lisa Kant,