The tactics of mistake

3

"No, no - it's all right!" she said to her father. "I'm just a little dizzy, suddenly, that's all. I'll go lie down... No, Dad, you stay here! Colonel Grahame, you can help me to my cabin, can't you - as long as you are leaving anyway."

"Of course," said Cletus.

He came quickly around the table and she took hold of his arm. She was tall, and she leaned the not inconsiderable weight of her healthy young body heavily against him. Almost irritably, she waved her father and deCastries back into their seats.

"Really!" she said. Her voice sharpened. "I'm all right. I just want to lie down for a bit. Will you please not make a fuss about it? Colonel... "

"Right here," said Cletus. They moved off together slowly, she still leaning against him as they crossed the lounge and went out into the corridor turning left.

She continued to lean on him until they had made a turn in the corridor that hid them from the lounge entrance, then she stopped abruptly, straightened up and pulled away turning to face him.

"I'm all right," she said. "I just had to do something to get you out of there. You aren't drunk at all!"

"No," said Cletus, good-humoredly. "And not a very good actor either, evidently."

"You couldn't have fooled me, if you were! I can feel... " She half-raised her hand, fingers spread out as if to touch him on the chest; and then dropped the hand abruptly as he looked curiously at it. "I can see right through people like you. Never mind that. It would have been bad enough if you were drunk. Trying to play games with a man like Dow deCastries!"

"I wasn't exactly playing games," said Cletus, soberly.

"Oh, don't tell me!" she said. "Don't you think I know what kind of idiots professional soldiers can make of themselves when they try to deal with people outside their own special military world? But a Medal of Honor means something to me, even if most civilians don't know what it is!" Her eyes had slipped into line with his again. She almost wrenched her gaze away. "And that's why I helped get you away from him just now. The only reason!... And I'm not going to do it again!"

"I see," said Cletus.

"So you get back to your cabin now, and stay there! Stay away from Dow deCastries from now on. From Dad and me, too... Are you listening?"

"Of course," said Cletus. "But I'll see you the rest of the way to your cabin, at least."

"No thanks. I can get there by myself."

"What if someone sees you doing just that and the word gets back to the Secretary that your dizziness cleared up this quickly, once you were out of the lounge?"

She glared at him, turned and stalked off down the corridor. Cletus caught up with her in two long strides and fell into step.

"About professional soldiers," he said, mildly. "One isn't just like another... "

She stopped and faced him abruptly, forcing him to stop also. "I suppose," she said, grimly, "you think my father never was anything but a mercenary."

"Of course not," Cletus said. "A lieutenant-general in the Royal Army of Afghanistan, wasn't he, up until ten years or so ago?"

She stared at him. "How did you know?" Her tone was accusing.

"Military history - even recent military history - is part of my field," he said. "The University Revolution at Kabul twelve years ago, which ended up by taking over the government at Kabul, is part of it. The Afghanistani Army wouldn't have had more than one General Eachan Khan. He must have emigrated from Earth not more than a couple of years after the takeover."

"He didn't have to leave!" she said. "They still wanted him in the Army, even after Afghanistan gave up its independence to become a sector area of the Coalition. But there were other things... " She broke off.

"Other things?" asked Cletus.

"You wouldn't understand!" She turned and began walking once more down the corridor. But, after a few steps, the words came from her as if she could not keep them in. "My mother had died... and... Salaam Badshahi Daulat Afghanistan - when they began enforcing the death penalty for anyone singing the old Afghanistani anthem, he resigned. So he emigrated - to the Dorsai."

"It's a new world full of soldiers there, I understand," said Cletus. "It shouldn't have been too - "

"They found him work as a captain - a captain in a mercenary battalion!" she flashed at him. "And since then, in ten years, he's managed to work his way just back up to colonel - and there he'll stay. Because the Dorsai mercenaries can't find employment for anything larger than a short regiment - and after his expenses are paid we don't have enough left over from what he makes to visit Earth, let alone live there again, unless the Exotics or someone pay our way there on official business."

Cletus nodded. "I see," he said. "But it's a mistake for you to try to mend things through deCastries. He's not capable of being influenced the way you hope."

"Mend things... " She turned her head and stared at him, meeting his eyes this time in unthinking shock, her face suddenly pale.

"Of course," said Cletus. "I'd been wondering what you were doing at his table. You'd have been underage at the time your father emigrated to the Dorsai, so you must have dual Coalition-Dorsai citizenship. You have the right to go back and live on Earth any time you want to take up your Coalition citizenship. But your father can't be repatriated except by special political dispensation, which is almost impossible to get. Either you or he must think you can get deCastries to help you with that - "

"Dad's got nothing to do with it!" Her voice was fierce. "What kind of a man do you think he is?"

He looked at her. "No. You're right of course," he said. "It must have been your idea. He's not the type. I grew up in a military family back on Earth, and he reminds me of some of the generals I'm related to. In fact, if I hadn't wanted to be a painter - "

"A painter?" She blinked at the sudden change of topic.

"Yes," said Cletus, smiling a little wryly. "I was just starting to make a living at it when my draft number came up, and I decided to go into the Alliance Military Academy after all, the way my family had wanted me to from the beginning. Then I got wounded, of course, and discovered I liked the theory of military art. So painting got left behind."

While he was talking she had come to a halt automatically before one of the stateroom doors lining the long, narrow corridor. But she made no attempt to open it. Instead she stood, staring at him.

"Why did you ever leave teaching at the Academy, then?" she asked.

"Someone," he said, humorously, "has to make the worlds safe for scholars like myself."

"By making a personal enemy out of Dow deCastries?" she said, incredulously. "Didn't it teach you anything when he saw through your game with the teacups and the sugar cubes?"

"But he didn't," said Cletus. "Oh, I ought to admit he did a very good job of covering up the fact he hadn't."

"He covered up?"

"Certainly," Cletus answered. "He lifted the first cup out of over-confidence, feeling sure he could handle whatever came of my shell game. When he turned up the first cube he thought I had blundered, not he. With the second cube, he revised his ideas, but was still overconfident enough to try again. When he turned up the third cube he finally woke to the fact that the game was completely under my control. So he had to find an excuse for stopping it and refusing to choose a fourth time."

She shook her head. "This is all the wrong way around," she said, unbelievingly. "You're twisting what happened to make it look the way you want it."

"No," said Cletus. "DeCastries was the one who twisted it, with his actually very clever explanation of why he wouldn't lift a cup a fourth time. The only trouble was, it was a false explanation. He knew he'd find a sugar cube under any cup he lifted."

"How could he?"

"Because I had cubes under all three cups, of course," said Cletus. "When I lifted one cube from the bowl, I palmed two others. By the time he got around to the fourth choice, deCastries had probably figured that out. The fact that the game turned out to be the avoiding of finding a cube, instead of trying to find one, misled him at first. But pointing it out by then would have been too late to keep him from looking foolish at having played the game three times already. People like deCastries can't afford to look foolish."

"But why did you do it?" Melissa almost cried. "Why do you want to make an enemy like that?"

"I need to get him involved with me," said Cletus, "so I can make use of him. Unless I can make him annoyed enough to thrust, I can't parry. And only by successfully continuing to parry every attempt he makes can I finally get his whole attention... Now you see," he went on, a little more gently, "why you ought to be worrying about your own involvement with Dow deCastries instead of mine. I can handle him. On the other hand, you - "

"You... " Suddenly blazing with anger, she turned and jerked open the door. "You absolute - go mix yourself up with Dow. Get yourself chewed up to mincemeat. I hope you do. But stay away from me... And from Dad! Do you hear me?"

He looked at her, and a slight shadow of something like pain passed through him. "Of course," he said, stepping back. "If that's what you want."

She went in, slamming the door behind her. He stood for a second, looking at its blank surface. For a moment with her there, the self-imposed barrier of isolation he had set up around himself many years ago, when he found others did not understand him, had almost melted. But it was back now.

He drew a short, deep breath that was almost a sigh. Turning, he went off down the corridor in the direction of his own stateroom.