The tactics of mistake

6

Thunder, deeper toned than Earth's, muttered beyond the ridge of hills inland from Bakhalla like a grumbling of giants, as Cletus and Arvid arrived at the residence of Mondar. But above the city the sky was clear. Out over the rooftops of the buildings leading down the harbor, the yellow sun of Kultis was filling the sky and sea alike with pinkish gold.

Mondar's home, surrounded by trees and flowering shrubs, both native and Earth variform, sat alone on a small hill in the eastern suburbs of the city. The building itself was made up of an assortment of basic building units put together originally with an eye more toward utility than appearance. However, utility no longer controlled any but the basic forms of the house. In everything else an artistic and gentle influence had been at work.

The hard white blocks of the building units, now tinted by the sunset, did not end abruptly at the green lawn, but were extended into arbors, patios and half-rooms walled with vine-covered trellises. Once Cletus and Arvid had left their car and passed into the first of these outer structures of the house, it became hard for them to tell at any time whether they were completely indoors or not.

Mondar met them in a large, airy half-room with solid walls on three sides only, and an openwork of vines on the fourth. He led them deeper into the house, to a long, wide, low-ceilinged room deeply carpeted and scattered with comfortably overstuffed chairs and couches. A number of people were already there, including Melissa and Eachan Khan.

"DeCastries?" Cletus asked Mondar.

"He's here," said Mondar. "He and Pater Ten are just finishing their talk with some of my fellow Exotics." As he spoke he was leading the two of them toward the small bar in one corner of the room. "Punch for whatever you'd like to drink. I've got to see some people right now - but I'd like to talk to you later, Cletus. Is that all right? I'll look you up just as soon as I'm free."

"By all means," said Cletus. He turned toward the bar as Mondar went off. Arvid was already picking up the glass of beer for which he had punched.

"Sir?" asked Arvid. "Can I get you... "

"Nothing right now, thanks," said Cletus. He was glancing around again and his eye lit upon Eachan Khan, standing alone with a glass in his hand next to a wide window screen. "Stay around here, will you, Arvid? So I can find you easily when I want you?"

"Yes, sir," said Arvid.

Cletus went toward Eachan Khan. The older man glanced around with a stony face, as though to discourage conversation, as he came up. Then, seeing who it was, Eachan's face relaxed - insofar as it could ever be said to be relaxed.

"Evening," Eachan said. "I understand you've met your commanding officer."

"News travels fast," said Cletus.

"We're a military post, after all," said Eachan. His gaze went past Cletus for a moment, and then returned. "Also, I hear you suggested something about a new infiltration of Neulander guerrillas through fitter's Pass?"

"That's right," said Cletus. "You don't think it's likely?"

"Very likely - now you've pointed it out," said Eachan. "By the way - I got hold of those three volumes on tactics you've already published. The Exotic library here had copies. I've only had time to glance through them, so far" - his eyes suddenly locked with Cletus' - "but it looks like sound stuff. Very sound... I'm still not sure I follow your tactics of mistake, though. As deCastries said, combat's no fencing match."

"No," said Cletus, "but the principle's applicable, all the same. For example, suppose a simple tactical trap you lay for an enemy consists of enticing his forces to strike at what seems to be a weak section of your line. But when they do, your line pulls back and draws them into a pocket, where you surround them and pinch them off with hidden, superior forces of your own."

"Nothing new about that," said Eachan.

"No," Cletus said, "but apply the tactics of mistake to essentially the same situation. Only this time, in a succession of contacts with the enemy, you entice him into picking up a series of what seem to be small, easy victories. Meanwhile, however, you're getting him to engage a larger amount of his available forces with each contact. Then, when he finally commits the greatest part of his strength for what he conceives as one more easy win - you convert that contact into a trap and he discovers that you've gradually drawn him into a field position where he's outflanked and completely at your mercy."

"Tricky," Eachan frowned. "Too tricky, perhaps... "

"Not necessarily," said Cletus. "Imperial China and Russia both used a crude version of this, drawing invaders deeper into their territories, until the invader suddenly realized he was too far from his supply and support bases and completely surrounded by the native enemy... Napoleon and the retreat from Moscow."

"Still - " Eachan broke off suddenly. His gaze had gone past Cletus; and Cletus, turning, saw that Dow deCastries was now in the room. The tall, dark and elegant Secretary to the Outworlds for the Coalition was now standing in conversation with Melissa, by the opposite wall.

Glancing from the two figures back to Eachan, Cletus saw that the older man's face had become as cold and still as the first sheet of ice on the surface of a deep pond on a windless winter day.

"You've known deCastries awhile now?" Cletus asked. "You and Melissa?"

"The women all like him." Eachan's voice was grim. His gaze was still on Melissa and Dow.

"Yes," said Cletus. "By the way - " He broke off, and waited. With reluctance, Eachan removed his gaze from the pair across the room and looked back at him.

"I was going to say," said Cletus, "that General Traynor came up with something strange when I was talking to him. He said he didn't have any jump troops here in Bakhalla. That surprised me. I did some reading up on you Dorsais before I came out here, and I thought a jump course was part of the training you gave your mercenaries?"

"We do," replied Eachan, dryly. "But General Traynor's like a lot of your Alliance and Coalition commanders. He doesn't think our training's good enough to qualify the men for jump-troop work - or a lot of other combat field duties."

"Hmm," said Cletus. "Jealousy? Or do you suppose they look on you mercenaries as competitors of a sort?"

"I don't say that," said Eachan, frostily. "You draw your own conclusions, of course." His eyes showed a desire once more to wander back across the room to Melissa and Dow.

"Oh, and something else I was going to ask you," said Cletus. "The assignment sheets for Bakhalla that I looked at back on Earth listed some Navy officers, on detached duty as marine engineers - something about river-and-harbors work. But I haven't seen any Navy people around."

"Commander Wefer Linet," said Eachan, promptly, "wearing civvies, down at the end of the couch across the room there. Come along. I'll introduce you."

Cletus followed Eachan at a long slant across the room, which brought them to a couch and several chairs where half a dozen men sat talking. Here, they were less than a quarter of the distance they had been before from Dow and Melissa - but still too distant to catch the conversation going on between the two.

"Commander," said Eachan, as they reached the couch, and a short, square-faced man in his middle thirties got up promptly from the end of the couch, a drink still in his hand, "I'd like you to meet Colonel Cletus Grahame, just out from Earth, to be attached to General Traynor's staff - tactical expert."

"Happy to meet you, Colonel," said Wefer Linet, shaking Cletus' hand with a hard, friendly grip. "Dream something up for us to do besides dredging river mouths and canals and my men'll love you."

"I'll do that," said Cletus, smiling. "It's a promise."

"Good!" said Wefer energetically.

"You've got those large, underwater bulldozers, haven't you?" asked Cletus. "I read about them in the Alliance Forces Journal, seven months back, I think."

"The Mark V, yes," Linet's face lit up. "Six of them here. Care for a ride in one someday? They're beautiful pieces of machinery. Bat Traynor wanted to take them out of the water and use them knocking down jungles for him. Do it better than anything you Army people have, of course. But they're not designed for land work. I couldn't tell the general no, myself, but I insisted on direct orders from Earth and kept my fingers crossed. Luckily, they turned him down back there."

"I'll take you up on that ride," said Cletus. Eachan was once more watching Melissa and Dow with a stony concentration. Cletus glanced about the room and discovered Mondar, standing talking to a pair of women who looked like the wives of diplomatic personnel.

As if Cletus' gaze had an actual physical touch to it, the Exotic turned toward him just then, smiled and nodded. Cletus nodded back and turned once more to Wefer, who had launched into an explanation of how his Mark V's worked, at depths down to a thousand feet or in the teeth of thirty-knot currents and tides.

"It looks as if I may be tied up for the next few days, out of the city," Cletus said. "But after that, if for some reason I shouldn't leave town... "

"Give me a ring, anytime," Wefer said. "We're working on the main harbor here at Bakhalla right now. I can have you off the docks and down inside my command unit in ten minutes, if you'll just phone me half an hour or so ahead of time to make arrangements... Hello, Outbond. The Colonel here's going to take a ride with me one of these days in a Mark V."

Mondar had come up while Wefer had been speaking.

"Good," said the Exotic, smiling. "He'll find that interesting." His gaze shifted to Cletus. "But I believe you wanted to talk to Dow deCastries, Cletus? His business with my people's over for the evening. You can see him, right across the room there, with Melissa."

"Yes... I see," said Cletus. He looked around at Wefer and Eachan. "I was just going over there. If you gentlemen will excuse me?"

He left Wefer with a promise to phone him at the earliest opportunity. As he turned away, he saw Mondar touch Eachan lightly on the arm and draw him off to one side in conversation.

Cletus limped over to where Dow and Melissa were still standing together. As Cletus came up they both turned to look at him, Melissa with a sudden, slight frown line between her darkened eyebrows. But Dow smiled genially.

"Well, Colonel," he said. "I hear all of you had a close call coming in from the spaceport earlier today."

"Only the sort of thing to be expected here on Bakhalla, I suppose," said Cletus.

They both laughed easily, and the slight frown line between Melissa's eyes faded.

"Excuse me," she said to Dow. "Dad's got something to say to me, I guess. He's beckoning me over. I'll be right back."

She left. The gazes of the two men met and locked.

"So," said Dow, "you came off with flying honors - defeating a guerrilla band single-handed."

"Not exactly. There was Eachan and his pistol." Cletus watched the other man. "Melissa might have been killed, though."

"So she might," said Dow, "and that would have been a pity."

"I think so," said Cletus. "She deserves better than that."

"People usually get what they deserve," said deCastries. "Even Melissas. But I didn't think scholars concerned themselves with individuals?"

"With everything," said Cletus.

"I see," said deCastries. "Certainly with sleight-of-hand. You know, I found a sugar cube under that middle cup after all? I mentioned it to Melissa and she said you'd told her you'd had cubes under all three cups."

"I'm afraid so," Cletus said.

They looked at each other.

"It's a good trick," said deCastries. "But not one that'd work a second time."

"No," said Cletus. "It always has to be different, a second time."

DeCastries smiled, an animal smile.

"You don't sound much like a man in an ivory tower, Colonel," he said. "I can't help thinking you like theory less, and action more, than you admit. Tell me" - his eyes hooded themselves amusedly under his straight brows - "if it comes down to a simple choice, aren't you tempted to practice rather than preach?"

"No doubt about it," said Cletus. "But one drawback to being a scholar is you're likely to be an idealist, too. And in the long run, when these new worlds are free to work out their own destinies without Earth's influence, one man's theories could have a longer and more useful effect than one man's practice."

"You mentioned that, back aboard ship," deCastries said. "You talked about Alliance and Coalition influence being removed from worlds like Kultis. Do you still feel as safe talking like that here, with your Alliance superiors all around the place?"

"Safe enough," said Cletus. "None of them would believe it - any more than you do."

"Yes. I'm afraid I don't." DeCastries picked up a wineglass from the small table beside which he was standing and held it briefly up to the light, twisting it slowly between thumb and forefinger. He lowered the glass and looked back at Cletus. "But I'd be interested in hearing how you think it's going to happen."

"I'm planning to help the change along a little," said Cletus.

"Are you?" said deCastries. "But you don't seem to have anything to speak of in the way of funds, armies or political influence to help with. Now, for example, I've got those things, myself, which puts me in a much stronger position. If I thought a major change could be accomplished - to my benefit, of course - I'd be interested in altering the shape of things to come."

"Well," said Cletus, "we can both try."

"Fair enough." DeCastries held the wineglass, looking over it at Cletus. "But you haven't told me how you'd do it. I told you what my tools are - money, armed troops, political power. What have you got? Only theories?"

"Theories are enough, sometimes," said Cletus. DeCastries slowly shook his head. He put the wineglass back down on the small table and lightly dusted against one another fingertips of the hand that had held the glass, as if to get rid of some stickiness.

"Colonel," he said, quietly, "you're either some new kind of agent the Alliance is trying to fasten on me - in which case I'll find out about you as soon as I can get word back from Earth - or you're a sort of interesting madman. In which case, events will take care of you in not much more time than it takes to establish the fact you're an agent." He watched Cletus for a second. Cletus met his eye expressionlessly.

"I'm sorry to say," deCastries went on, "you're beginning to sound more and more like a madman. It's too bad. If you'd been an agent, I was going to offer you a better job than the one you have with the Alliance. But I don't want to hire a madman - he'd be too unpredictable. I'm sorry."

"But," said Cletus, "if I turned out to be a successful madman... ?"

"Then, of course, it'd be different. But that's too much to hope for. So all I can say is, I'm sorry. I'd hoped you wouldn't disappoint me."

"I seem to have a habit of disappointing people," said Cletus.

"As when you first decided to paint instead of going on to the Academy and then gave up painting for a military life, after all?" murmured deCastries. "I've been a little disappointing to people in my life that way. I've got a large number of uncles and cousins about the Coalition world - all very successful managers, business chiefs, just as my father was. But I picked politics - " He broke off, as Melissa rejoined them.

"It wasn't anything... Oh, Cletus," she said, "Mondar said if you wanted to find him he'd be in his study. It's a separate building, out behind the house."

"Which way do I go?" asked Cletus.

She pointed through an arched entrance in a farther wall of the room. "Just go straight through there and turn left," she said. "The corridor you'll be in leads to a door that opens on the garden. His study building's just beyond it."

"Thank you," said Cletus.

He found the corridor, as Melissa had said, and followed it out into the garden, a small, terraced area with paths running to a line of trees, the tops of which tossed sharply in a hot, wet wind against a sky full of moonlight and torn cloud ends. There was no sign of any building.

At that moment, however, just as Cletus hesitated, he caught sight of light glimmering through the trees ahead of him. He went out across the garden and through the trees. Past their narrow belt he came into the open before a low-roofed, garage-like structure so comfortably fitted in among the vegetation surrounding it that it gave the impression of being comfortably half-sunk in the earth. Low, heavily curtained windows let out the small amount of light he had seen just now. There was a door before him; and as he approached, it slid noiselessly open. He stepped inside and it closed behind him. He stopped, instinctively.

He had walked into a softly but clearly lit room, more library than study in appearance, although it had something of both about it. Its air tasted strangely thin and dry and clean like air on some high mountain peak. Bookshelves inset in all four of the walls held a surprisingly large collection of old-fashioned, printed volumes. A study console and a library retrieval system each occupied a corner of the room. But Mondar, the only other person in the room besides Cletus, was seated apart from these devices on a sort of wide-surfaced and armless chair, his legs up and crossed before him, so that he sat like a buddha in the lotus position.

There was nothing except this to mark the moment and place as anything out of the ordinary - but as Cletus stepped through the door, a deep, instinctive warning shouted loudly at him, checking him just inside the threshold. He sensed an impalpable living tension that held the very air of the room - a feeling as of a massive, invisible force in delicate, temporary balance. For a second his mind recoiled.

Then it cleared. For one fleeting but timeless moment he saw that which was in the room - and that which was not.

What his eyes registered were like two versions of the same scene, superimposed on each other, but at the same time distinct and separate. One was the ordinary room, with Mondar seated on his chair, and all things ordinary.

The other was the same room, but filled with a difference. Here, Mondar did not sit on his chair but floated, in lotus position, a few inches above its seat cushion. Stretching out before and behind him was a succession of duplicating images, semitransparent, but each clearly identifiable - and while those closest to him, before and behind him, were duplicates of himself, those farther from him wore different faces - faces still Exotic, but of different men, different Outbonds. Before and behind him, these stretched away until they were lost to sight.

Cletus, too, he became aware, had his images in line with him. He could see those before and he was somehow conscious of those behind him. Before him was a Cletus with two good knees, but beyond this and two more Cletuses were different men, bigger men. But a common thread ran through them, tying the pulses of their lives to his, and continuing back through him to a man with no left arm, on and on, through the lives of all those others behind him until it ended, at last, with a powerful old man in half-armor sitting on a white horse with a baton in hand.

Nor was this all. The room was full of forces and currents of living pressures coming from vast distances to this focal point, like threads of golden light they wove back and forth, tying each other together, connecting some of Cletus' images with Mondar's, and even Cletus, himself, with Mondar, himself. They two, their forerunners and their followers, hung webbed in a tapestry of this interconnecting pattern of light during that single moment in which Cletus' vision registered the double scene.

Then, abruptly, Mondar turned his gaze on Cletus, and both tapestry and images were gone. Only the normal room remained.

But Mondar's eyes glowed at Cletus like twin sapphires illuminated from within by a light identical in color and texture to the threads that had seemed to fill the air of the room between both men.

"Yes," said Mondar. "I knew... almost from the moment I first saw you in the spaceship dining lounge. I knew you had potential. If it'd only been part of our philosophy to proselytize or recruit in the ordinary way, I'd have tried to recruit you from that minute on. Did you talk to Dow?"

Cletus considered the unlined face, the blue eyes, of the other, and slowly nodded.

"With your help," he said. "Was it actually necessary to get Melissa away, too? DeCastries and I could have talked over her head."

"I wanted him to have every advantage," Mondar said, his eyes glowing. "I wanted no doubt left in your mind that he'd been able to bid as high for you as he wanted to go... He did offer you a job with him, didn't he?"

"He told me," said Cletus, "that he couldn't - to an interesting madman. From which I gathered he was extremely eager to hire one."

"Of course he is," said Mondar. "But he wants you only for what you can do for him. He's not interested in what you could make of yourself... Cletus, do you know how we Exotics came about?"

"Yes," said Cletus. "I looked you up before I put in my request for transfer to here. The Association for the Investigation and Development of Exotic Sciences - my sources say you developed out of a black-magic cult of the early twenty-first century called the Chantry Guild."

"That's right," Mondar said. "The Chantry Guild was the brainchild of a man named Walter Blunt. He was a brilliant man, Cletus, but like most of the people of his tune, he was reacting against the fact that his environment had suddenly been enlarged from the surface of one world to the surfaces of any number of worlds spread out through light-years of interstellar space. You probably know the history of that period as well as I do - how that first, instinctive, racial fear of space beyond the solar system built up and erupted in a series of bloody social eruptions. It spawned any number of societies and cults for people attempting to adjust psychologically to feelings of vulnerability and insignificance, deep down on the unconscious level. Blunt was a fighter, an anarchist. His answer was revolution - "

"Revolution?" asked Cletus.

"Yes. Literally - revolution," Mondar answered. "Blunt wanted to destroy part of actual, objective physical reality as well - by using primitive psychic leverage. He called what he wanted to do 'creative destruction.' He called on people to 'Destruct!' But he couldn't quite push even the intense neurotics of his time all the way over the emotional brink. And then he was deposed as head of the Guild by a young mining engineer who'd lost an arm in a mine accident - "

"Lost an arm?" said Cletus sharply. "Which arm?"

"The left - yes, I think it was the left that was gone," said Mondar.

"Why?"

"Nothing," said Cletus. "Go on."

"His name was Paul Formain - "

"Fort-Mayne?" Cletus interrupted a second time.

"No t," answered Mondar, "F-o-r-m-a-i-n." He spelled it out, looking curiously at Cletus. "Something about this interests you particularly, Cletus?"

"Only the coincidences," said Cletus. "You said he had only one arm, so the right arm he had left would have been overmuscled from compensation development. And his name sounds almost like jort-mayne, which are the words used by the Norman French to describe their policy to the conquered English after they took over England in the eleventh century. Fort-mayne - literally, 'strong-hand.' It described a policy of using whatever force was necessary to keep the native English under control. And you say he took over the Chantry Guild, deposing this Blunt?"

"Yes." Mondar frowned. "I see the coincidences, Cletus, but I don't see why they're important."

"Maybe they aren't," said Cletus. "Go on. Formain took over the Chantry Guild and started your Exotic Association?"

"He almost had to wreck the Chantry Guild to do it," said Mondar. "But he did. He changed its aim from revolution to evolution. The evolution of man, Cletus."

"Evolution." Cletus repeated the word thoughtfully. "So, you don't think the human race is through evolving? What comes next, then?"

"We don't know, of course," said Mondar, folding his hands in his lap. "Can an ape imagine a man? But we're convinced the seeds of further evolution are alive in man, still - even if they aren't already germinating. We Exotics are dedicated to searching for those seeds, and protecting them once we've found them, so that they can flourish and grow until evolved man is part of our community."

"Sorry." Cletus shook his head. "I'd make a poor Exotic, Mondar. I've got my own job to do."

"But this is part of your job - and your job is part of it!" Mondar leaned forward, and his hands slid apart. "There's no compulsion on our members. Each one searches and works for the future the way he thinks best. All we ask is that when the skills of anyone are needed by the community, he makes them available to it. In return the community offers him its skills to improve him, physically and mentally, so he can be that much more effective in his own work. You know what you can do now, Cletus. Think what you might be able to do if you could make use of all we can teach you!"

Cletus shook his head again.

"If you turn us down," said Mondar, "it signals a danger to you, Cletus. It signals an unconscious desire on your part to go the deCastries way - to let yourself be caught up by the excitement of directly manipulating people and situations instead of dealing with what's much more valuable, but less emotionally stimulating - the struggle with ideas to find principles that'll lift people eventually above and beyond manipulation."

Cletus laughed, a little grimly. "Tell me," he said, "isn't it true that you Exotics won't carry or use weapons yourself, even in self-defense? And that's why you hire mercenaries like the Dorsai, or make agreements with political groups like the Alliance to defend yourselves?"

"Yes - but not for the reason most people think, Cletus," said Mondar, swiftly. "We haven't any moral objection to fighting. It's just that the emotions involved interfere with clear thinking, so people like myself prefer not to touch weapons. But there's no compulsion on our people on this. If you want to write your work on military tactics, or even keep and carry guns - "

"I don't think you follow me," said Cletus. "Eachan Khan told me something. You remember when you were in the command car after it overturned, earlier today, and he suggested you not let yourself be taken alive by the Neulander guerrillas - for obvious reasons? You answered that you could always die. 'No man,' you said, 'commands this body but myself.' "

"And you think suicide is a form of violence - "

"No," said Cletus. "I'm trying to explain to you why I'd never make an Exotic. In your calmness in the face of possible torture and the need to kill yourself, you were showing a particular form of ruthlessness. It was ruthlessness toward yourself - but that's only the back side of the coin. You Exotics are essentially ruthless toward all men, because you're philosophers, and by and large, philosophers are ruthless people."

"Cletus!" Mondar shook his head. "Do you realize what you're saying?"

"Of course," said Cletus, quietly. "And you realize it as well as I do. The immediate teaching of philosophers may be gentle, but the theory behind their teaching is without compunction - and that's why so much bloodshed and misery has always attended the paths of their followers, who claim to live by those teachings. More blood's been spilled by the militant adherents of prophets of change than by any other group of people down through the history of man."

"No Exotic spills blood," said Mondar, softly.

"Not directly, no," said Cletus. "But to achieve the future you dream of means the obliteration of the present as we know it now. You may say your aim's changed from revolution to evolution, but your goal is still the destruction of what we have now to make room for something different. You work to destroy what presently is - and that takes a ruthlessness that's not my way - that I don't agree with." He stopped speaking.

Mondar met his eyes for a long moment. "Cletus," said Mondar at last, "can you be that sure of yourself?"

"Yes," said Cletus. "I'm afraid I can." He turned toward the door. As he reached the door and put his hand on its button, he turned back.

"Thanks all the same, Mondar," he said. "You and your Exotics may end up going my way. But I won't go yours. Good night." He opened the door.

"Cletus," said Mondar, behind him, "if you refuse us now, you do it at your own risk. There are larger forces at work in what you want to do than I think you understand."

Cletus shook his head. "Good night," he said again, and went out. Back in the room where he had left Arvid, he found the young lieutenant and told him they were leaving. As they reached the parking area together and Cletus opened the door of their aircar, the sky split open above them in a wild explosion of lightning and thunder, with raindrops coming down like hailstones.

They bolted for the interior of the car. The rain was icy and the few seconds of being exposed to it had left their jackets soaked and clinging to their shoulders. Arvid put power on the vehicle and lifted it out of the lot.

"All hell's broke loose tonight," he murmured, as they swung back across the city. Then, startled, he looked at Cletus, sitting beside him.

"Now, why did I say that?" he asked. Cletus did not answer and after a second Arvid answered himself.

"All the same," he said, half to himself, "it has."