Soldier, ask not

Chapter 8

As the door shut behind me, I paused on the top of the three steps leading up it, to try to think what I could do next. What I would do next. I had gone over, under, or around what seemed to be immovable barriers of human decision too many times to give up so easily. Somewhere, there must be a back entrance to what I wanted, a trapdoor, a crack in the wall. I glanced again at the officers' parking area, jammed with floaters.

And then, suddenly, it came to me. All at once the bits and pieces floated together to give me a completed picture; and I kicked myself mentally for not having seen it before.

Item, the strange look of familiarity about the aide who had come to take Eldest Bright from the party of Donal Graeme. Item, Blight's own precipitate departure following the aide's appearance. Finally, the unusually deserted Headquarters' area, contrasted with the crowded parking lot here, the empty office within, and the refusal of the Groupman on duty reception even to call the Officer of the Day.

Either Bright himself, or his presence in the war area, had triggered some unusual plan for military action on the part of the Friendly mercenaries. A surprise blow, crushing the Cassidan forces and ending the war suddenly would be excellent publicity for the Eldest's attempts to hire out his Friendly commands of mercenaries in the face of some public dislike on the other worlds of their fanatic behavior and attitudes.

Not that all Friendlies were dislikable, I had been told. But, having met the Groupman inside, I could see where it would not take many like him to prejudice people against the black-clad soldiers as a group.

Therefore, I would bet my boots that Bright was inside the Command Post now with his top brass, preparing some military action to take the Cassidan levies by surprise. And with him would be the aide who had summoned him from Donal Graeme's party - and unless my highly trained professional memory was misleading me, I had a hunch who that aide might be.

I went quickly back down to my own floater, got in it and turned on its phone. Central at Contrevale looked abruptly at me out of the screen, with the face of a pretty, young blonde girl.

I gave her the number of my floater, which of course was a rented vehicle.

"I'd like to speak to a Jamethon Black," I said. "He's an officer with the Friendly forces; I believe he's right now at their Headquarters' Unit near Contrevale. I'm not sure what his rank is - at least Force-Leader, though he may be a Commandant. It's something of an emergency. If you can contact him, would you put him through to me on this phone?''

"Yes, sir," said Central. "Please hold on, I'll report in a minute." The screen blanked out and the voice was replaced by the soft hum that indicated the channel was open and holding.

I sat back against the cushions of the floater, and waited. Less than forty seconds later, the face returned.

"I have reached your party and he will be in contact with you in a few seconds. Will you hold, please?''

"Certainly," I said.

"Thank you, sir." The face disappeared. There was another half minute or so of hum and the screen lit up once more, this time with the face of Jamethon.

"Hello, Force-Leader Black?" I said. "Probably you don't remember me. I'm Newsman Tam Olyn. You used to know my sister, Eileen Olyn."

His eyes had already told me that he remembered me. Evidently I had not changed as much as I thought I had; or else his memory was a very good one. He himself had changed also, but not in any way that would make him unrecognizable. Above the tabs on the lapels of his uniform that showed his rank was still the same, his face had strengthened and deepened. But it was the same still face I remembered from my uncle's library that day. Only - it was older, of course.

I remembered how I had thought of him then, as a boy. Whatever he was now, however, he was a boy no longer. Nor ever could be again,

"What can I do for you, Mr. Olyn?" he asked. His voice was perfectly even and calm, a little deeper than I remembered it. "The operator said your call was an emergency."

"In a way it is," I said, and paused. "I don't want to take you from anything important; but I'm in your Headquarters Area here, in the officers' parking lot just outside the Headquarters Command Building. If you're not too far from there, maybe you can step over here and speak to me for a moment." I hesitated again. "Of course, if you're on duty at the moment-"

"My duty at the moment can spare me for a few minutes," he said. "You're in the parking lot of the Command Building?"

"In a rental floater, green, with transparent top."

"I will be right down, Mr. Olyn."

The screen went blank.

I waited. A couple of minutes later, the same door by which I myself had entered the Command Building to talk with the Groupman behind the counter opened. A dark, slim figure was momentarily silhouetted against the light there; then it came down the three steps toward the lot.

I opened the door of the floater as he got close and slid around on the seat so that he could step in and sit down himself.

"Mr. Olyn?" he said, putting his head in.

"That's right. Join me."

"Thank you."

He stepped in and sat down, leaving the door open behind him. It was a warm spring night for that season and latitude on New Earth; and the soft scents of trees and grasses blew past him into my face.

"What is this emergency?" he asked.

"I've got an assistant I need a pass for." I told him the situation, omitting the fact that Dave was Eileen's husband.

When I was through, he sat silent for a moment, a silhouette against the lights of the lot and the Command Building, with the soft night airs blowing past him.

"If your assistant's not a Newsman, Mr. Olyn," he said at last, in his quiet voice, "I don't see how we can authorize his coming and going behind and through our lines."

"He is a Newsman - for this campaign at least," I said. "I'm responsible for him, and the Guild is responsible for me, as it is for any Newsman. Our impartiality is guaranteed between the stars. That impartiality of course includes my assistant."

He shook his head slowly in the darkness.

"It would be easy enough for you to disown him, if he should turn out to be a spy. You could say simply that he was pushed upon you as an assistant, without your knowledge."

I turned my head to look full into his darkened features. I had led him to this point in our talk for just this reason.

"No, I wouldn't find it easy at all," I said. "Because he wasn't pushed on me. I went to a great deal of trouble to get him. He's my brother-in-law. He's the boy Eileen finally married; and by using him as my assistant, I'm keeping him out of the lines where he's likely to get killed." I paused to let that sink in.

"I'm trying to save his life for Eileen, and I'm asking you to try and help me save it."

He did not move or answer immediately. In the darkness, I could not see any change of expression on his features. But I do not think there would have been any change to see even if I had had light to see by, because he was a product of his own spartan culture, and I had just dealt him a heavy, double blow.

For, as you have seen, that was how I handled men - and women. Deep in every intelligent, living individual are things too great, too secret or too fearful for questioning. Faiths, or loves, or hates or fears or guilts. All I needed ever was to discover these things, and then anchor my argument for the answer I wanted in one of these deep, unself-questionable areas of the individual psyche, so that to question the rightness of what I argued, a man must needs question the secret, unquestionable place in himself as well.

In Jamethon Black's case, I had anchored my request both in that area of him which had been capable of love for Eileen in the first place; and in that part of every prideful man (and pride was in the very bone of the religion of these Friendlies) that required him to be above nourishing a long-held resentment for a past and (as far as he knew) a fair defeat.

To refuse the pass to Dave, now that I had spoken as I did, was tantamount to sending Dave forth to be killed, and who could think this was not done on purpose, now that I had shown Jamethon the emotional lines connecting it to his inner pride and lost love?

He stirred now, on the seat of the floater.

"Give me the pass, Mr. Olyn," he said. "I'll see what can be done."

I gave it to him, and he left me.

In a couple of minutes, he was back. He did not enter the floater this time, but he bent down to the open door and passed in the paper I had given him.

"You did not tell me," he said in his quiet voice, "that you had already applied for a pass, and been refused.''

I stopped dead, still clutching the paper in midair, staring up and out at him.

"Who? That Groupman in there?" I said. "But he's just a noncommissioned officer. And you're not only a commissioned officer but an aide."

"Nonetheless," he said, "a refusal has been given. I cannot alter a decision already made. I'm sorry. No pass is possible for your brother-in-law."

It was only then I realized that the paper he had handed me back was unsigned. I stared at it, as if I could read it in the darkness and will a signature into being on the blank area where it should have gone. Then fury boiled up in me almost beyond control. I jerked my gaze up from the paper and stared out the open door of the floater at Jamethon Black.

"So that's your way of getting out of it!" I said. "That's how you excuse yourself for sending Eileen's husband to his death! Don't think I don't see through you, Black - because I do!"

With his back to the light, with his face in darkness, I still could not see his face and any change that might have come over it at my words. But something like a light sigh, a faint, sad breath, came from him; and he answered in the same, even tones.

"You see only the man, Mr. Olyn," he said. "Not the Vessel of the Lord. I must get back to my duties now. Good morning."

With that he swung closed the door of the floater, turned and went away across the lot. I sat, staring after him, boiling inside at the line of cant he had thrown at me in leaving by way of what I took to be excuse. Then I woke to what I was doing. As the door of the Command Building opened, his dark figure was silhouetted there for an instant, and then disappeared, taking the light with it as the door closed again. I kicked the floater into movement, swung it about and headed out of the military area.

As I drove out past the gateyard, they were changing guards for the three A.M. watch; and the dismissed watch were drawn up in a dark clump, still under weapons, engaged in some ritual of their special worship.

As I passed them, they began to sing - chant rather - one of their hymns. I was not listening for the words, but the three beginning ones stuck in my ear in spite of me. "Soldier, ask not-" were the first three words, of what I later learned was their special battle hymn, sung at times of special rejoicing, or on the very eve of combat.

"Soldier, ask not-" It continued to ring in my ears, mockingly it seemed to me, as I drove away with Dave's pass still unsigned in my pocket. And once more the fury rose in me; and once more I swore that Dave would need no pass. I would not let him from my side for an instant during the coming day between the battle lines; and in my presence he would find his protection and his utter safety.