Childe #05 - The Spirit of Dorsai Gordon R Dickson

“Myself, first. Then Mene and Reiko. The rest team up as you wish. Team members, stay close and fire as needed; but don’t move in to the compound unless or until you’re called in by one of us who’ve gone ahead. That includes Ancients. Ancients, stay with your teams. In case everything falls apart here, it’ll be up to each of you to pull your team off, get it back into the mountains, and keep it alive. Everybody understand?”

They nodded or murmured their understanding.

“All right—” She was interrupted by a flicker of red, a cloth being waved briefly from just behind the crest of the ridge overlooking Foralie. “All right. Convoy in sight. It’ll take it another five minutes or so to reach the house. Everybody up behind the ridge, ready to go.”

Lying with the others, just behind the crest of the ridge, she looked through a screen of grass at the convoy. Even to her eye, its vehicle column seemed to move somewhat sluggishly. Evidently that part of Arvid’s information—about the convoy troops all being sick—was correct. She crossed her fingers mentally upon the hope that the rest of what he had told her was also reliable—but with misgivings. Counting the team members, the Dorsai would outnumber the troops of the convoy and those already at Foralie nearly five to one—but children against experienced soldiers made that figure one of mockery.

Experienced soldiers against civilians was bad enough.

“Stay right there—” he was beginning, when she interrupted him.

“Oh, stop that nonsense! My great-granddaughter’s having a baby. Where is she?”

“Where? She… oh, the house, of course, ma’m.”

“All right, you go tell her I’ll be right there. I’ve got to speak to whoever’s in charge of that convoy—”

“I can’t leave my post. I’m sorry, but—”

“What do you mean, you can’t leave your post? Don’t you recognize me? I’m the mayor of Foralie Town. You must have been shown an image of me as part of your briefing. Now, you get in there—”

“I’m sorry. I really can’t—”

“Don’t tell me can’t-”

They argued, the sentry forgetting his weapon to the point where its barrel sagged off to one side. A new humming announced another skimmer that slid down upon them with Reiko and Mene Tosca aboard.

“Halt—” said the soldier, swinging his rifle to command these new arrivals.

“Now what’re you doing?” said Amanda, exasperatedly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cletus being escorted into the house. The majority of the soldiers of the convoy should now be out of their vehicles and moving inside one or another of the cantonment buildings. There was still no sign of Arvid, Bill and their team.

“Don’t you understand that neighbors come calling when there’s a birth?” she said sharply, interrupting another argument that was developing between the sentry and Reiko. “I know these neighbors well. I’ll vouch for them…”

“In a second, ma’m…” the sentry threw over his shoulder at her and turned back to Reiko.

“No second,” said Amanda.

The difference in the tone of her voice brought him around. He froze at the sight of Amanda’s heavy handgun pointed at his middle. Ineffective as they were at ordinary rifle distance, the energy handguns were devastating at point-blank range like this. Even if Amanda’s aim should be bad—and she held the gun too steadily to suggest bad aim—any pressure on its trigger would mean his being cut almost in two.

“Just keep talking,” said Amanda softly. She held the gun low, so that the sentry’s own body shielded any view of it from the compound or the house. “You and I are just going on with our conversation. Wave

these two to the compound as if you were referring them to someone there. There’ll be other skimmers coming—”

“—and after each one stops here for a moment, you’ll wave them to the compound, too. Do you understand?” Amanda said.

“Yes…” His eyes were on the steady muzzle of her handgun.

“Good. Mene, Reiko, go ahead. Wait until enough others catch up with you before you make a move, though.”

“Leave it to us,” said Reiko. Their skimmer lifted and hummed toward the compound.

“Just stand relaxed,” Amanda told the sentry. “Don’t move your rifle.”

She sat. The sentry’s face showed the pallor of what was perhaps illness, now overlaid with a mute desperation. He did not move. He was not as youthful as some of the other soldiers, but from the relative standpoint of Amanda’s years they were all young. Other skimmers came and moved on to the compound, until all the adults had gone by her.

“Stand still,” Amanda said to the sentry.

Off to one side, a movement caught her eye. It was a figure slipping around the corner of the house and entering the door. Then another. Arvid and Bill with their men—at last.

She turned her head slightly to look. Five… six figures flickered around the corner of the house and in through the door. Out of the other corner of her eyes she caught movement close to her. Looking back, she saw the sentry bringing up the barrel of his rifle to knock the energy weapon out of her hand. Twenty, even ten years before, she would have been able to move the handgun out of the way in time, but age had slowed her too much.

She felt the shock against her wrist as metal met metal and the energy gun was sent flying. But she was already stooping to the scabbard with the pellet shotgun as the sentry’s cone rifle swung back to point at her. The stream of cones whistled over her bent head, then lowered. She felt a single heavy shock in the area of her left shoulder, but then the shotgun had, in its turn, batted the light frame of the cone rifle aside and the sentry was looking into the wide muzzle of the heavier gun.

“Drop it,” said Amanda.

Her own words sounded distant in her own ears. There was a strange feeling all through her. The impact had been high enough so that possibly the single cone that struck her had not made a fatal wound; but shock was swift with missiles from that weapon.

The cone rifle dropped to the ground.

“Now lie down, face down…” said Amanda. She was still hearing her voice as if from a long distance away, and the world about her had an unreal quality to it. “No, out of arm’s reach of the rifle…”

The sentry obeyed. She touched the power bar of her skimmer, lifted it and lowered it carefully on the lower half of his body. Then she killed the power and got off. Pinned down by the weight upon him, the sentry lay helpless.

“If you call or struggle, you’ll get shot,” she told him.

There was the whistling of cone rifle fire from the direction of the cantonment. She turned in that direction, but there was no one to be seen outside the buildings she faced. The vehicle park was behind them, however, screened by them from her sight.

She bent to pick up the handgun, then thought better of it. The pellet shotgun was operable in spite of the rust in its barrel, and uncertain as she was now, she was probably better off with a weapon having a wide shot pattern. She began to walk unsteadily toward the compound. Every step took an unbelievable effort and her balance was not good, so that she wavered as she went. She reached the first building and opened its door. A supply room—empty. She went on to the next and opened the door, too wobbly to take ordinary precautions in entering. The thick air of a sickroom took her nostrils as she entered. Tina Alchenso, one of the other women, stood with an energy rifle, covering a barracks-like interior in which all the soldiers there seemed sick or dying. The air seemed heavy as well with the scentless odor of resignation and defeat. Those who were able had evidently been ordered out of their beds. They lay face down on the floor in the central aisle, hands stretched out beyond their heads.

“Where’s everybody?” Amanda asked.

“They went on to the other buildings,” Tina said.

Amanda let herself out again and went on, trying doors as she went. She found two more buildings where one of the adults stood guard over ill soldiers. She was almost back to the vehicle parking area, when she saw a huddled figure against the outside Avail of a building.

“Reiko!” she said, and knelt clumsily beside the other woman.

“Stop Mene,” Reiko barely whispered. She was bleeding heavily just above the belt of her jumper. “Mene’s out of her head.”

“All right,” said Amanda. “You lie quiet”

With an effort, she rose and went on. There was the next building before her. She opened the door and found Mene holding her energy rifle on yet another room of sick and dying soldiers. Mene’s face was white and wiped clean of expression. Her eyes stared, fixed, and her finger quivered on the firing button of the weapon. The gaze of all the men in the room were on her face; and there was not even the sound of breathing.

“Mene,” said Amanda, gently. Mene’s gaze jerked around to focus on Amanda for a brief moment before returning to the soldiers.

“Mene…” said Amanda, softly. “It’s almost over. Don’t hurt anyone, now. It’s just about over. Just hold them a while longer. That’s all, just hold them.”

Mene said nothing.

“Do you hear me?”

Mene nodded jerkily, keeping her eyes on the men before her.

“I’ll be back soon,” said Amanda.

She went out. The world was even more unreal about her and she felt as if she was walking on numb legs. But that was unimportant. Something large was wrong with the overall situation.

She tried to think with a dulled mind. She could gamble that Arvid and Bill’s team had already subdued the house; and go back there now, without checking further, to get help… her mind cleared a little. A move like that would be the height of foolishness. Even if Arvid and Bill had men to spare to come back here with her, going for assistance would waste time when there might be no time to waste.

She took a good grip on her pellet gun, which was becoming an intolerable weight in her hands, and started around the curved wall of one of the huts.

Possibly the sense of unreality that held her was largely to blame—but it seemed to her that there was no warning at all. Suddenly she found herself in the midst of a tight phalanx of vehicles, the front ones already loaded with weaponed and alert-looking soldiers, and the rear ones with other such climbing into them. But, if her appearance among them had seemed sudden to her, it had apparently seemed the same to them.

She was abruptly conscious that all movement around her had ceased. Soldiers were poised, half-in, half-out of their vehicles. Their eyes were on her.

Plainly, her fears had been justified. The apparent replacement of well soldiers by sick ones had been a trap; and these she faced now were about to move in for a counterattack She felt the last of her energy and will slipping away, took one step forward, and jammed the muzzle of her pellet shotgun against the side panel shielding the power unit in the closest vehicle.

“Get down,” she said to the officers and men facing her.

They stared at her as if she was a ghost risen out of the ground before them.

“I’ll blow every one of you up if I have to—and be glad to,” she said. “Get out. Lie down, face down, all of you!”

For a second more they merely sat frozen, staring. Then understanding seemed to go through them in an invisible wave. They began to move out of their seats.

“Hurry…” said Amanda, for her strength was going fast. “On the ground…”

They obeyed. Dreamily, remotely, she saw them climbing from the vehicles and prostrating themselves on the ground.

Now what do I do, Amanda thought? She had only a minute or two of strength left.

The answer came from the back of her head— the only answer. Press the firing button of the pellet gun, after all, and make sure no one gets away—

Unexpectedly, there was the sound of running feet behind her. She started to glance back over her shoulder; and found herself caught and upheld. She was surrounded by the field uniforms of four of the Dorsai staff members who had been with Arvid and Bill.

“Easy…” said the one holding her—almost carrying her, in fact. “We’ve got it. It’s all over.”

“… shai Dorsai!”

What was that? That ridiculous phrase that the children had made up only a few years back, and which was now beginning to be picked up by their elders as a high compliment? It was supposed to mean “real, actual Dorsai.” Nonsense.

It occurred to her, as some minor statistic might, that she was dying; and she was vaguely annoyed with herself for not having realized this earlier. There were things she should think about, if that was the case. If Betta had been in labor before the attack began, she might well have her child by now.

If so, it was important she tell Betta what she had decided just before they moved in on the troops, that the use of the Amanda name was her responsibility now, and the responsibility of succeeding generations…

“Well,” said a voice just above her, and she looked up into the face of Ekram. He stank of sweat and anesthetic. “Coming out of it, are you?”

“How long…” it was incredibly hard to speak

“Oh, about two days,” he answered with abominable cheerfulness.

She thought of her need to tell Betta of her decision.

“Betta…” she said. It was becoming a little easier to talk; but the effort was still massive. She had intended to ask specifically for news of Betta and the child.

“Betta’s fine. She’s got a baby boy, all parts in good working order. Three point seven three kilograms.”

Boy! A shock went through her.

Of course. But why shouldn’t the child be a boy? No reason—except that, deluded by her own aging desires, she had fallen into the comfortable thought that it would not be anything but a girl.

A boy. That made the matter of names beside the point entirely.

For a moment, however, she teetered on the edge of self-pity. After all she had known, after all these years, why couldn’t it have been a girl—under happier circumstances when she could have lived to know it, and find that it was a child who could safely take up her name?

She hauled herself back to common sense. What was all this foolishness about names, anyway? The Dorsai had won, had kept itself independent. That was her reward, as well as the reward to all of them —not just the sentimental business of passing her name on to a descendent. But she should still tell Bet-ta of her earlier decision, if Ekram would only let them bring the girl to her. It would be just like the physician to decide that her dying might be hurried by such an effort, and refuse to let Betta come. She would have to make sure he understood this was not a decision for him to make. A deathbed wish was sacred and he must understand that was what this was…

“Ekram,” she managed to say faintly. “I’m dying…”

She stared at him aghast. This was outrageous. This was too much. After all she had been through… then the import of his words trickled through the sense of unreality wrapping her.

“Bring Betta here! At once!” she said; and her voice was almost strong.

“Later,” said Ekram.

“Then I’ll have to go to her,” she said, grimly.

She was only able to move one of her arms feebly sideways on top of the covers, in token of starting to get up from the bed. But it was enough.

“All right. All right!” said Ekram. “In just a minute.”

She relaxed, feeling strangely luxurious. It was all right. The name of the game was survival, not how you did it. A boy! Almost she laughed. Well, that sort of thing happened, from time to time. In a few more years it could also happen that this boy could have a sister. It was worth waiting around to see. She would still have to die someday, of course—but in her own good time.

INTERLUDE

The voice of the third Amanda ceased. In the still mountain afternoon there were no other sounds but •the hum of some nearby insects. A little breeze sprang up, and was gone again.

With her words still echoing in his mind, Hal thought of the struggle she had been speaking of, that early Dorsai fight to stay free of Dow deCastries; and its likeness to the present fight on all the worlds, to resist the loss of human freedom to the Other Men and Women—those cross-breeds from human splinter cultures such as that on the Dorsai itself. This present fight in which he and the third Amanda were both caught up.

“What happened inside Foralie?” he asked. “Inside the house, I mean, after Arvid Johnson and Bill Athyer with their men went inside? What happened with Cletus and Dow—or were they just able to take over with no trouble?”

“Something more than no trouble,” she said. “Swahili was there, remember, and Swahili had been a Dorsai. But Eachan Khan killed Swahili when Swahili let himself be distracted for a second and Arvid and Bill were able to control the situation. Dow had a sleeve gun of his own, it turned out. He hurt Cletus, but didn’t manage to kill him. In the end it was Dow who was shipped back to Earth as a prisoner.”

“I see,” said Hal. But his first question had immediately raised another one in his mind.

“How was that other business worked?” he asked. “That Coalition trick of having a contingent of well soldiers up there at Foralie after they’d seemed to have been rotated down into the area of town? Where did they come from, the soldiers Amanda found wait

ing, and ready to fight, in the vehicle park?”

“You remember the military physician had phoned Dow deCastries the night before,” Hal’s Amanda said. “He was a political appointee himself and he knew General Amorine was another.

Besides Amorine was sick himself from the nickel carbonyl vapors. The military physician knew that taking his suspicions to Amorine would simply have meant Amorine arresting Ekram and trying to force some kind of answer out of him—and the military doctor was only too aware of what it would be like for him to face alone a situation where everybody was dying. So, he went directly to Dow, instead.”

wrong in a thousand different places with his occupation forces; and, next to Cletus, he had the best mind on the planet.” She paused to look at him. “Don’t underestimate what Dow was.” “I didn’t intend to.” “What he saw,” Amanda said, “was that, for all practical purposes, his occupation of the Dorsai

had failed. But he could still, with some luck, grab Cletus and take him off-planet as a prisoner—or at the worst, get away himself. This, if he had military control in this one district alone.”

“And he figured out that as soon as Cletus reached Foralie, Foralie would be attacked by the

local people in a try to rescue him?” “Of course.” Amanda shrugged. “It was obvious —as the first Amanda essentially said, to Ramon, when Ramon wondered if Cletus hadn’t really meant

what he said at the airpad—that they should do nothing against the soldiers. One way or another the district had to attack, then. So he sent up the patrol that morning with only sick soldiers; and it brought back well soldiers, all right; but those same well soldiers—only now pretending to be sick—went back up as the troops in the convoy that escorted Cletus to Foralie.”

“Ah,” said Hal, nodding. “How long did the first Amanda actually live?” “She lived to be a hundred and eight.” “And saw a second Amanda?” Hal’s Amanda shook her head. “No. It was nearly a hundred years before there was a second Amanda,” she said. Hal smiled. “Who had the wisdom to name the second one Amanda?” “No one,” Amanda said. “She was named Elaine; but by the time she was sir years old everyone

was already calling her the second Amanda. You might say, she named herself.”

Once more, in the back of his mind, Hal felt an obscure alerting to attention of that part of him which recognized the existence of The Purpose. “Tell me something about the second Amanda,” he said. The third Amanda hesitated for a brief moment. “For one thing,” she said, “the second Amanda was the one both Kensie and Ian Graeme were in

love with.”

“That’s right,” Amanda said. “Ion’s wife, the mother of his children, was named Leah. But it was the second Amanda who both the twins fell in love with in the first place.”

“How did it happen?”

The third Amanda looked down toward Fal Morgan.

“The second Amanda grew up with Kensie and Ian,” she said. “How could it be any other way when the two households were practically side by side, here? She grew up with them; and by the time they were nearly grown, if she loved either of them, it was probably Kensie, with that brightness and warmth that was such a natural part of him.”

“She loved Kensie?” v

“I said—if she loved either of them… then. She was young, they were young. She had had them around all her life. What was there about them to make her suddenly fall seriously in love with either one of them? But then they graduated from the Academy and went off to the wars; and when they came back, it was all different.”

She paused.

“Different? How?” Hal said gently, to get her going again.

She sighed once more.

“It’s not easy to describe,” she said. “It’s something that happens often, with the situation we have here on the Dorsai. You grow up, knowing the boys of your district, and those from a lot of others. And when they finally sign contracts and go off-planet, that’s all they are, still—just tall boys. But then, perhaps it’s a year, or several, before they come home; and when they do you find they’re… different.”

“You mean, they’ve become men.”

“Not only men,” she said, “but men you never thought might come from the boys you knew. Some things you hardly noticed about them have moved forward in them and taken over. Other things you thought were the most important part of what made them, have gone way back in them, or been lost forever. They’ve grown up in ways you didn’t expect. Suddenly, it’s as if you never had known them. They can be anybody… strangers.”

Her voice had sunk so low that she seemed to be speaking more to herself than him; and her gaze was on nothing.

“You sit and talk with them, after they come home,” she went on, “and you realize you’re talking to someone who’s gone away from what was common to both of you and now has something that has nothing to do with you, that you’ve never known and maybe never will know …”

She looked at him. Her eyes were brilliant.

“And then you discover that the same thing that happened to them has happened to you. You were

a girl they grew up with when they left; but that girl is gone, gone forever. With you, too, some things have come forward, other things have gone back or been lost forever. Now they sit talking to a woman they don’t know, that now they maybe never will know. And so, everything changes.”

“Yes,” she said, soberly. “They came back, two strangers, and fell in love with a stranger they had once grown up with. With any other three people that would have been problem enough—but those twins were half and half of each other, and Amanda knew it.”

“What happened?”

The third Amanda, Hal’s Amanda, did not answer. She had drawn her knees up to her chin, and hugged them. Now she rested her chin upon her knees, staring down into the valley.

“What happened?” Hal asked again.

“Everybody had simply assumed that Kensie and Amanda would end up together,” she said, at last, “including Ian. When Ian found he was in love with Amanda himself, it was unthinkable to him that he should interfere in any way with his twin brother. So he married Leah, who had wanted him for a long time. Married her simply and quickly.”

“And took himself out of the picture.”

“No, “Amanda shook her head. “Because he had made a mistake. After the two of them had come home, different, it wasn’t Kensie, but Ian, that the

second Amanda had fallen in love with. Ian. Only with Ian being the kind of person he was, there was no chance that, having once married Leah, that situation could ever be changed.”

“But you say …” began Hal puzzled, then checked himself. “But, if she had any love for Kensie at all, what was to keep her from ending up with him? Certainly that would have been better than the two of them—”

“The way they were.” Amanda turned her head to look at Hal. “Kensie and Ian were too close not to know each other’s feelings; and Kensie loved Amanda as completely as Amanda loved Ian. Knowing how she loved Ian, Kensie could not take the place he would have filled in her life if things had been otherwise. He went back to the wars as if… he was too much a Dorsai to deliberately put himself in the way of getting killed. But for all his brightness, he lived in the shadow of death for years after that; and it seemed as if death was perversely avoiding him.”

She looked away from him, down to the valley again.

“The Exotics say,” she went on, “that there are ontogenetic laws which explain why someone like Kensie could lead a charmed life under such conditions.”

“Yes,” said Hal. He had not realized how strangely he had said the word until he looked up and saw her gazing at him.

“You know something about ontogenetics?” she asked. “Something that applies to the second Amanda, and Ian and Kensie?”

“To Ian and Kensie, maybe,” he said. The part of him that concerned itself with what he called The

Purpose—that half-seen thing he must do with his life —was working powerfully, now; and he heard his own words almost as if someone else was speaking them. “Ontogenetics merely says nothing happens by chance or accident. Everything is interrelated. Stop and think. When Donal Graeme was moving toward his goal of bringing all the inhabited worlds under one order, his enemy was William of Ceta, just as Dow deCastries was the special opponent of Cletus Grahame.”

“To defeat William, who had unlimited power and wealth, Donal needed to defeat all possible military opponents. To do that he needed a military force larger than had ever been seen on the inhabited worlds. Only one other man could train that force as Donal needed it trained—and the rule in the Graeme household was that no two of their men served in the same place at the same time; far the same reason that a father and mother of young children may travel by different spacecraft, so that in case a phase

shift accident should take one of them, the other would still be there to take care of the children.”

“But it was different with Ian and Kensie,” Amanda said. “They were allowed to serve in the same farce, together.”

“Until Kensie’s death. Then the rule was broken once more by Eachan Khan Graeme, who you’ll remember was the family head, Donal’s father and Jan’s older brother.” The Purpose-oriented part of Hal’s mind was in complete control of him, now. He went on, not noticing the sudden intensity with which she was regarding him. “He asked Donal to find work with him for Ian, as the only means of rousing Ian after his twin’s death.”

She was watching him closely.

“You know a good deal about the Graemes,” she said.

Suddenly aware of her attention, he grew flustered.

“I… don’t,” he said. “I only know something about ontogenetics.”

“What you’re saying adds up to the fact that Donal had Kensie killed to free Ian far his own use.”

“No, no…” he protested. “Only Donal’s need far Ian, acting on the network of cause and effect—”

“No!” she said. “Do you think any such farces could combine to kill Kensie, and Ian wouldn’t be aware of it? They were one person, those twins!”

“But you said yourself that Kensie had been searching far death, ever since he had lost Amanda,” he protested. “Maybe Ian simply, at last, let him go. You remember Kensie was assassinated. Dorsai aren’t easy to assassinate, unless they don’t care any

“No!” the third Amanda said, again, almost violently. “That wasn’t the way it was, at all. You don’t know… did you know that Tonias Velt, the Blau-vain chief of police, wrote Eachan Khan Graeme afterwards, telling him the whole story? Velt was there and saw it all. Do you know what he saw?”

“No,” said Hal. The part of him concerned with The Purpose drew close to the front of his mind and spoke through his lips almost against his will, as if it, not he, controlled them. “But I want to know.”

“I’ll tell you, then,” said Amanda, “I’ll tell it all to you, just as I read it when I was young—just as Velt wrote it to Eachan Khan Graeme after Kensie’s body had been shipped home here far burial

BROTHERS

Physically, he was big, very big. The professional soldiers of several generations from that small, harsh world called the Dorsai, are normally larger than men from other worlds; but the Graemes are large even among the Dorsai. At the same time, like his twin brother, Ian, Commander Kensie Graeme was so well-proportioned in spite of his size that it was only at moments like this, when I saw him standing next to a fellow Dorsai like his executive officer, Colonel Charley ap Morgan, that I could realize how big he actually was. He had the black, curly hair of the Graemes, the heavy-boned face and brilliant grey-green eyes of his family, also, that utter stillness at rest and that startling swiftness in motion that was characteristic of the several-generations Dorsai.

So, too, had Ian, back in Blauvain; for physically the twins were the image of each other. But otherwise, temperamentally, their difference was striking. Everybody loved Kensie. He was like some golden god of the sunshine. While Ian was dark and solitary as the black ice of a glacier in a land where it was always night.

“… Blood,” Pel Sinjin had said to me on our drive out here to the field encampment of the Expedition. “You know what they say, Tom. Blood and ice water, half-and-half in his veins, is what makes a Dorsai. But something must have gone wrong with those two when their mother was carrying them. Kensie got all the blood. Ian…”

He had let the sentence finish itself. Like Kensie’s own soldiers, Pel had come to idolize the man, and downgrade Ian in proportion. I had let the matter slide.

Now, Kensie was smiling at us, as if there was some joke we were not yet in on.

“A welcoming committee?” he said. “Is that what you are?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “We came out to talk about letting your men into Blauvain city for rest and relaxation; now that you’ve got those invading soldiers from the Friendly Worlds all rounded up, disarmed, and ready for shipment home—what’s the joke?”

“Just,” said Charley ap Morgan, “that we were on our way into Blauvain to see you. We just got a repeater message that you and other planetary officials here on St. Marie are giving Ian and Kensie, with their staffs, a surprise victory dinner in Blauvain this evening.”

“Hells Bells!” I said..

“You hadn’t been told?” Kensie asked.

“Not a damn word,” I said.

It was typical of the fumbling of the so-called government-of-mayors we had here on our little world of St. Marie. Here was I, Superintendent of Police in Blauvain—our capital city—and here was Pel, commanding general of our planetary militia which had been in the field with the Exotic Expedition sent to rescue us from the invading puritan fanatics from the Friendly Worlds; and no one had bothered to tell either one of us about a dinner for the two Commanders of that Expedition.

“You’re going in, then?” Pel asked Kensie. Kensie nodded. “I’ve got to call my HQ.”

Pel went out. Kensie laughed.

“Not that way,” I said. “But even though the Friendlies have all been rounded up, the Blue Front is still with us in the shape of a good number of political outlaws and terrorists that want to pull down our present government. They lost the gamble they took when they invited in the Friendly troops; but now they may take advantage of any trouble that can be stirred up around your soldiers while they’re on their awn in the city.”

“There shouldn’t be any,” Kensie reached for a dress gunbelt of black leather and began to put it on over the white dress uniform he was already wearing. “But we can talk about it, if you like. —You’d better be doing some dressing yourself, Charley.”

“On my way,” said Charley ap Morgan; and went out.

So, fifteen minutes later, Pel and I found ourselves headed back the way we had come, this time with three passengers. I was still at the controls of the police car as we slid on its air cushion across the rich grass of our St. Marie summer toward Blau-vain; but Kensie rode with me in front, making me feel small beside him—and I am considered a large man among our own people on St. Marie. Beside Kensie, I must have looked like a fifteen year old boy in relative comparison. Pel was equally small in back between Charley and a Dorsai Senior Commandant named Chu Van Moy—a heavy-bodied, black Mongol, if you can imagine such a man, from the Dorsai South Continent.

“… No real problem,” Kensie was saying as we left the grass at last for the vitreous road surface leading us in among the streets and roads of the city—in particular the road curving in between the high office buildings; of Blauvain’s West Industrial Park, now just half a kilometer ahead, “we’ll turn the men loose in small groups if you say. But there shouldn’t be any need to worry. They’re mercenaries, and a mercenary knows that civilians pay his wages. He’s not going to make any trouble which would give his profession a bad name.”

“I don’t worry about your men,” I said. “It’s the Blue Front fabricating some trouble in the vicinity of some of your men and then trying to pin the blame on them, that worries me. The only way to guard against that is to have your troops in small enough numbers so that my policemen can keep an eye on the civilians around them.”

“Fair enough,” said Kiensie. He smiled down at me. “I hope, though, you don’t plan on having your men holding our men’s hands all through their evenings in town—”

Just then we passed between the first of the tall office buildings. A shadow from the late morning sun fell across the car, and the high walls around us gave Kensie’s last words a flat echo. Right on the heels of those words—in fact, mixed with them—came a faint sound as of multiple whistlings about us; and Kensie fell forward, no longer speaking, until his forehead against the front windscreen stopped him from movement.

The next thing I knew I was flying through the air, literally. Charley ap Morgan had left the police car on the right side, dragging me along with a hand like a steel clamp on my arm, until we ended up against the front of the building on our right. We crouched there, Charley with his dress handgun in his fist and looking up at the windows of the building opposite. Across the narrow way, I could see Chu Van Moy with Pel beside him, a dress gun also in Chu’s fist. I reached for my own police beltgun, and remembered I was not wearing it.

About us there was utter silence. The narrow little projectiles from one or more sliver rifles, that had fluted about us, did not come again. For the first time I realized there was no one on the streets and no movement to be seen behind the windows about us.

“A hospital,” he said again. His face was as pale as a sick man’s.

Neither Charley or Chu paid any attention. Silently they were continuing to scan the windows of the building opposite them.

“A hospital!” shouted Pel, suddenly.

Abruptly, Charley got to his feet and slid his weapon back into its holster. Across the street, Chu also was rising. Charley looked at the other Dorsai.

“Yes,” said Charley, “where is the nearest hospital?”

But Pel was already behind the controls of the police car. The rest of us had to move or be left behind. He swung the car toward Blauvain’s Medical Receiving, West, only three minutes away.

He drove the streets like a madman, switching on the warning lights and siren as he went. Screaming, the vehicle careened through traffic and signals alike, to jerk to a stop behind the ambulance entrance at Medical West. Pel jumped from the car.

“I’ll get a life support system—a medician—” he said, and ran inside.

I got out; and then Charley and Chu got out, more slowly. The two Dorsais were on opposite sides of the car.

“Find a room,” Charley said. Chu nodded and went after Pel through the ambulance entrance.

Charley turned to the car. Gently, he picked up Kensie in his arms, the way you pick up a sleeping child, gently, holding Kensie to his chest so that Kensie’s head fell in to rest on Charley’s left shoulder. Carrying his Reid Commander, Charley turned and went into the medical establishment. I followed.

Inside, there was a long corridor with hospital personnel milling about. Chu stood by a doorway a few meters down the hall to the left, half a head taller than the people between us. With Kensie in his arms, Charley went toward the other Commandant.

Chu stood aside as Charley came up. The door swung back automatically, and Charley led the way into a room with surgical equipment in sterile cases along both its sides, and an operating table in its center. Charley laid Kensie softly on the table, which was almost too short for his tall body. He put the long legs together, picked up the arms and laid their hands on the upper thighs. There was a line of small, red stains across the front of his jacket, high up, but no other marks. Kensie’s face, with its eyes closed, looked blindly to the white ceiling overhead.

“All right,” said Charley. He led the way back out into the hall. Chu came last and turned to click the lock on the door into place, drawing his handgun.

“What’s this?” somebody shouted at my elbow, pushing toward Chu. “That’s an emergency room. You can’t do that-”

Chu was using his handgun on low aperture to slag the lock of the door. A crude but effective way to make sure that the room would not be opened by anyone with anything short of an industrial, heavy-duty torch. The man who was talking was middle-aged, with a grey mustache and the short green jacket of a senior surgeon. I intercepted him and held him back from Chu.

“Yes, he can,” I said, as he turned to stare furiously in my direction. “Do you recognize me? I’m Tomas Velt, the Superintendent of Police.” He hesitated, and then calmed slightly—but only slightly.

“I still say—” he began. “By the authority of my office,” I said, “I do now deputize you as a temporary Police Assistant. —That puts you under my orders. You’ll see that no one in this hospital tries to open that door or get into that room until Police authorization is given. I make you responsible. Do you understand?”

He blinked at me. But before he could say anything, there was a new outburst of sound and action; and Pel broke into our group, literally dragging along another man in a senior surgeon’s jacket. “Here!” Pel was shouting. “Right in here. Bring the life support—” He broke off, catching sight of Chu. “What?” he said. “What’s going on? Is Kensie in there? We don’t want the door sealed—” “Pel,” I said. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Pel!” He finally felt and heard me. He turned a furious face in my direction. “Pel,” I said quietly, but slowly and clearly to him. “He’s dead. Kensie. Kensie is dead.” Pel stared at me. “No,” he said irritably, trying to pull away from me. I held him. “No!”

“Dead,” I said, looking him squarely in the eyes. “Dead, Pel.” His eyes stared back at me, then seemed to loose their focus and stare off at something else. After a little they focused back, on mine again and I let go of him.

“Dead?” he repeated. It was hardly more than a whisper.

He walked over and leaned against one of the white-painted corridor walls. A nurse moved toward him and I signalled her to stop. “Just leave him alone for a moment,” I said. I turned back to the two Dorsai officers who were now-testing the door to see if it was truly sealed. “If you’ll come to Police Headquarters,” I said, “we can get the hunt going for whoever did it.” Charley looked at me briefly. There was no more friendly humor in his face now; but neither did it show

any kind of shock, or fury. The expression it showed was only a businesslike one. “No,” he said briefly. “We have to report.”

He went out, followed by Chu, moving so rapidly that I had to run to keep up with their long strides. Outside the door, they climbed back into the police car, Charley taking the controls. I scrambled in behind them and felt someone behind me. It was Pel. ” “No. Too late,” he said. And it was too late. Charley already had the police car in motion. He drove no less swiftly than Pel had

driven, but without madness. For all that, though, I made most of the trip with my fingers tight on the edge of my seat; for with the faster speed of Dorsai reflexes he went through available spaces and openings in traffic where I would have sworn we could not get through.

We pulled up before the office building attached to the Exotic Embassy as space for Expeditionary Base Headquarters. Charley led the way in past a guard, whose routine challenge broke off in mid-sentence as he recognized the two of them.

“We have to talk to the Base Commander,” Charley said to him. “Where’s Commander Graeme?” “With the Blauvain Mayor, and the Outbond.” The guard, who was no Dorsai, stammered a little. Charley turned on his heel. “Wait—sir, I mean the Outbond’s with him, here in the Commander’s office.” Charley turned again. “We’ll go on in. Call ahead,” Charley said. He led the way, without waiting to watch the guard obey, down a corridor and up an escalator ramp to

an outer office where a young Force-Leader stood up behind his desk at the sight of us.

“Sir—” The Force-Leader said to Charley, “the Outbond and the Mayor will only be with the Commander another few minutes—” Charley brushed past him, and the Force-leader spun around to punch at his desk phone. Heels clicking

on the polished stone floor, Charley led us toward a further door and opened it, stepping into the office beyond. We followed him there—into a large, square room with windows overlooking the city and our own broad-shouldered Mayor, Moro Spence, standing there with a white-haired, calm-faced, hazel-eyed man in a blue robe both facing a desk at which sat the mirror image of Kensie that was his twin brother, Ian Graeme.

Ian spoke to his desk as we came in.

“It’s all right,” he said. He punched a button and looked up at Charley, who went forward with Chu beside him, to the very edge of the desk, and then both saluted. “What is it?” asked Ian. “Kensie,” said Charley. His voice became formal. “Field Commander Kensie Graeme has just been

killed, sir, as we were on our way into the city.”

For perhaps a second—no longer—Ian sat without speaking. But his face—so like Kensie’s and yet so different—did not change expression. “How?” he asked, then.

“By assassins we couldn’t see,” Charley answered. “Civilians we think They got away.”

“The Blue Front!” he said. “Ian… Ian, listen…”

No one paid any attention to him. Charley was briefly recounting what had happened from the time the message about the invitation had reached the encampment—

“But there wasn’t any celebration like that planned!” protested Moro Spence, to the deaf ears around him. Ian sat quietly, his harsh, powerful face half in shadow from the sunlight coming in the high window behind him, listening as he might have listened to a thousand other reports. There was still no change visible in him; except perhaps that he, who had always been remote from everyone else, seemed even more remote now. His heavy forearms lay on the desktop, and the massive hands that were trained to be deadly weapons in their own right lay open and still on the papers beneath them. Almost, he seemed to be more legendary character than ordinary man; and that impression was not mine alone, because behind me I heard Pel hiss on a breath of sick fury indrawn between his teeth; and I remembered how he had talked of Ian being only ice and water, Kensie only blood.

The white-haired man in the blue robe, who was the Exotic, Padma, Outbond to St. Marie for the period of the Expedition, was also watching Ian steadily. When Charley was through with his account, Padma spoke.

“Ian,” he said; and his calm, light baritone seemed to linger and reecho strangely on the ear, “I think this is something best handled by the local authorities.”

Ian glanced at him.

“No,” he answered. He looked at Charley. “Who’s Duty Officer?”

“NgTsok,” said Charley.

Ian punched the phone button on his desk

“Get me Colonel Waru Ng’kok, Encampment HQ,” he said to the desk

” ‘No?’ ” echoed Moro. “I don’t understand Commander. We can handle it. It’s the Blue Front, you see. They’re an outlawed political—”

I came up behind him and put my hand on his shoulder. He broke off, turning around.

“Oh, Tom!” he said, on a note of relief “I didn’t see you before. I’m glad you’re here—”

I put my finger to my lips. He was politician enough to recognize that there are times to shut up. He shut up now, and we both looked back at Ian.

“… Waru? This is Base Commander Ian Graeme,” Ian was saying to his phone. “Activate our four best Hunter Teams; and take three Forces from your on-duty troops to surround Blauvain. Seal all entrances to the city. No one allowed in or out without our authority. Tell the involved troops briefing on these actions will be forthcoming.”

As professional, free-lance soldiers, under the pattern of the Dorsai contract—which the Exotic employers honored for all their military employees—the mercenaries were entitled to know the aim and purpose of any general orders for military action they were given. By a ninety-six per cent vote among

the enlisted men concerned, they could refuse to obey the order. In fact, by a hundred per cent vote, they could force their officers to use them in an action they themselves demanded. But a hundred per cent vote was almost unheard of. The phone grid in lan’s desk top said something I could not catch.

He clicked off the phone and reached down to open a drawer in his desk He took out a gunbelt—a working, earth-colored gunbelt unlike the dress one Kensie had put on earlier—with sidearm already in its holster; and, standing up, began to strap it on. On his feet, he dominated the room, towering over us all.

“Tom,” he said, looking at me, “put your police to work, finding out what they can. Tell them all to be prepared to obey orders by any one of our soldiers, no matter what his rank.”

“I don’t know if I’ve got the authority to tell them that,” I said.

“I’ve just given you the authority,” he answered calmly. “As of this moment, Blauvain is under martial law.”

Moro cleared his throat; but I jerked a hand at him to keep him quiet. There was no one in this room with the power to deal with lan’s authority now, except the gentle-faced man in the blue robe. I looked appealingly at Padma, and he turned from me to Ian.

“Naturally, Ian, measures will have to be taken, for the satisfaction of the soldiers who knew Kensie,” Padma said softly, “but perhaps finding the guilty men would be better done by the civilian police without military assistance?”

“I’m afraid we can’t leave it to them,” said Ian briefly. He turned to the other two Dorsai officers.. “Chu, take command of the Forces I’ve just ordered to cordon the city. Charley, you’ll take over as Acting Field Commander. Have all the officers and men in the encampment held there, and gather back any who are off post. You can use the office next to this one. We’ll brief the troops in the encampment, this afternoon. Chu can brief his forces as he posts them around the city.”

The two turned and headed toward the door.

“Just a minute, gentlemen!”

Padma’s voice was raised only slightly. But the pair of officers paused and turned for a moment.

“Colonel ap Morgan, Commandant Moy,” said Padma, “as the official representative of the Exotic Government, which is your employer, I relieve you from the requirement of following any further orders of Commander Ian Graeme.”

Charley and Chu looked past the Exotic, to Ian.

“Go ahead,” said Ian. They went. Ian turned back to Padma. “Our contracts provide that officers and men are not subject to civilian authority while on active duty, engaged with an enemy.”

“But the war—the war with the Friendly invaders—is over,” said Moro.

“One of our soldiers has just been killed,” said Ian. “Until the identity of the killers is established, I’m going to assume we’re still engaged with an enemy.”

He looked again at me.

“Tom,” he said. “You can contact your Police Headquarters from this desk As soon as you’ve done that,

report to me in the office next door, where I sent Charley.” He came around the desk and went out. Padma followed him. I went to the desk and put in a phone call to my own office.

“For God’s sake, Tom!” said Moro to me, as I punched phone buttons for the number of my office, and started to get the police machinery rolling. “What’s going on, here?”

I was too busy to answer him. Someone else was not. “He’s going to make them pay for killing his brother,” said Pel savagely, from across the room. “That’s what’s going on!”

I had nearly forgotten Pel. Moro must have forgotten him absolutely, because he turned around to him now as if Pel had suddenly appeared on the scene in a cloud of fire and brimstone-odorous smoke.

“Pel?” he said. “Oh, Pel—get your militia together and under arms, right away. This is an emergency—” “Go to hell!” Pel answered him. “I’m not going to lift a finger to keep Ian from hunting down those assassins. And no one else in the militia who knew Kensie Graeme is going to lift a finger, either.”

“But this could bring down the government!”

Moro was close to the idea of tears, if not to the actual article. “This could throw St. Marie back into anarchy, and the Blue Front will take over by default!” “That’s what the planet deserves,” said Pel, “when it lets men like Kensie be shot down like dogs —men

who came here to risk their lives to save our government!”

“You’re crazier than these mercenaries are!” said Moro, staring at him. Then a touch of hope lifted Moro’s drawn features. “Actually, Ian seems calm enough. Maybe he won’t—” “He’ll take this city apart if he has to,” said Pel, savagely. “Don’t blind yourself” I had finished my phoning. I punched off, and straightened up, looking at Pel. “I thought you told me there was nothing but ice and water to Ian?” I said. “There isn’t,” Pel answered. “But Kensie’s his twin brother. That’s the one thing he can’t sit back from and

shuffle off. You’ll see.” “I hope and pray I don’t,” I said; and I left the office for the one next door where Ian was waiting for me.

Pel and Moro followed; but when we came to the doorway of the” other office, there was a soldier there who would let only me through. “… We’ll want a guard on that hospital room, and a Force guarding the hospital itself,” Ian was saying

slowly and deliberately to Charley ap Morgan as I came in. He was standing over Charley, who was seated at a desk Back against a wall stood the silent figure in a blue robe that was Padma. Ian turned to face me.

“The troops at the encampment are being paraded in one hour,” he said. “Charley will be going out to brief them on what’s happened. I’d like you to go with him and be on the stand with him during the briefing.”

I looked back at him, up at him. I had not gone along with Pel’s ice-and-water assessement of the man. But now for the first time I began to doubt myself and begin to believe Pel. If ever there had been two brothers who had seemed to be opposite halves of a single egg, Kensie and Ian had been those two. But here was Ian with Kensie dead—perhaps the only living person on the eleven human-inhabited worlds among the stars who had loved or understood him— and Ian had so far shown no more emotion at his brother’s death than he might have on discovering an incorrect Order of the Day.

If Ian was repressing emotion that was due to explode sometime soon, then we were all in trouble. My Blauvain police and the planetary militia together were toy soldiers compared to these professionals. Without the Exotic control to govern them, the whole planet was at their mercy. But there was no point in admitting that—even to ourselves—while even the shadow of independence was left to us.

“Commander,” I said. “General Pel Sinjin’s planetary militia were closely involved with your brother’s forces. He would like to be at any such brief-ing. Also, Moro Spence, Blauvain’s Mayor and pro-tem President of the St. Marie Planetary Government, would want to be there. Both these men, Commander, have as deep a stake in this situation as your troops.”

Ian looked at me.

“General Sinjin,” he said, after a moment. “Of course. But we don’t need mayors.”

“St. Marie needs them,” I said. “That’s all our St. Marie World Council is, actually—a collection of mayors from our largest cities. Show that Moro and the rest mean nothing, and what little authority they have will be gone in ten minutes. Does St. Marie deserve that from you?”

He could have answered that St. Marie had been the death of his brother—and it deserved anything he wished to give it. But he did not. I would have felt safer with him if he had. Instead, he looked at me as if from a long, long distance for several seconds, then over at Padma.

“You’d favor that?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Padma. Ian looked back at me.

“Both Moro and General Sinjin can go with you, then,” he said. “Charley will be leaving from here by air in about forty minutes. I’ll let you get back to your own responsibilities until then. You’d better appoint someone as liaison from your police, to stand by here in this office.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I will.”

I turned and went out. As I left, I heard Ian behind me, dictating.

“… All travel by the inhabitants of the City of Blauvain will be restricted to that which is absolutely essential. Military passes must be obtained for such travel. Inhabitants are to stay off the streets. Anyone involved in any gathering will be subject to investigation and arrest. The City of Blauvain is to recognize the fact that it is now under martial, not civil, law…”

The door closed behind me. I saw Pel and Moro waiting in the corridor.

“It’s all right,” I told them, “you haven’t been shut out of things—yet.”

We took off from the top of that building, forty minutes later, Charley and myself up in the control seats of a military eight-man liaison craft with Pel and Moro sitting back among the passenger seats.

He was looking ahead through the forward vision screen and he did not answer for a moment. When he did, it was without turning his head.

“Kensie and I,” he said softly, almost absently, “grew up together. Most of our lives we’ve been in the same place, working for the same employers.”

I had thought I knew Charley ap Morgan. In his cheerfulness, he had seemed more human, less of a half-god of Avar than other Dorsai like Kensie or Ian— or even lesser Dorsai officers like Chu. But now he had moved off with the rest. His words took him out of my reach, into some cold, high, distant country where only Dorsai lived. It was a land I could not enter, the rules of which I would never understand. But I tried again, anyway.

“Charley,” I said, after a moment of silence, “that doesn’t answer what I asked you.”

He looked at me then, briefly.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.

He turned his attention back to the controls. We flew the rest of the way to the encampment without talking.

When we landed, we found the entire Expedition drawn up in formation. They were grouped by Forces into Battalion and Arm Groups; and their dun-colored battle dress showed glints of light in the late afternoon sunlight. It was not until we mounted the stand facing them that I recognized the glitter for what it was. They had come to the formation under arms, all of them—although that had not been in lan’s orders. Word of Kensie had preceded us. I looked at Charlie; but he was paying no attention to the weapons.

The sun struck at us from the southwest at a lowered angle. The troops were in formation, with their backs to the old factory, and when Charley spoke, the amplifiers caught up his voice and carried it out over their heads.

“Troops of the Exotic Expeditionary Force in relief of Saint Marie,” he said. “By order of Commander Ian Graeme, this briefing is ordered for the hundred and eighty-seventh day of the Expedition on St. Marie soil.”

The brick walls slapped his words back with a flat echo over the still men in uniform. I stood a little behind him, in the shadow of his shoulders, listening. Pel and Moro were behind me.

“I regret to inform you,” Charley said, “that sniper activity within the City of Blauvain, this day, about thirteen hundred hours, cost us the life of Commander Kensie Graeme.”

There was no sound from the men.

“The snipers have not yet been captured or killed. Since they remain unidentified, Commander Ian Graeme has ordered that the condition of hostilities, which was earlier assumed to have ended, is still in effect. Blauvain has been placed under martial law, sufficient force has been sent to seal the city against any exit or ingress, and all persons under Exotic contract to the Expedition have been recalled to this

encampment…”

“Look at them!” he said. “They’re ready to march on Blauvain right now. Do you think they’ll let Kensie be killed on some stinking little world like this of ours, and not see that somebody pays for it?”

“Shut up, Pel,” I murmured out of the corner of my mouth at him. But he went on.

“Look at them!” he said. “It’s the order to march they’re waiting for—the order to march on Blauvain. And if Charley doesn’t end up giving it, there’ll be hell to pay. You see how they’ve all come armed?”

“That’s right, Pel, Blauvain’s not your city!” It was a bitter whisper from Moro. “If it was Castelmane they were itching to march on, would you feel the same way about it?”

“Yes!” hissed Pel, fiercely. “If men come here to risk their lives for us, and we can’t do any better than let them be gunned down in the streets, what do we deserve? What does anyone deserve?”

“Stop making a court case out of it!” whispered Moro harshly. “It’s Kensie you’re thinking of—that’s all. Just like it’s only Kensie they’re thinking of, out there…”

I tried again to quiet them, then realized that actually it did not make any difference. For all practical purposes, the three of us were invisible there behind Charley. The attention of the armed men ranked before us was all on Charley, and only on him. As Pel had said, they were waiting for one certain order; and only that order mattered to them.

It was like standing facing some great, dun-colored, wounded beast which must charge at any second now, if only because in action would there be relief from the pain it was suffering. Charley’s expressionless voice went on, each word coming back like a slapping of dry boards together, in the echo from the factory wall. He was issuing a long list of commands having to do with the order of the camp, and its transition back to a condition of battle-alert.

I could feel the tension rising as he approached the end of his list of orders without one which might indicate action by the Expedition against the city in which Kensie had died. Then, suddenly, the list was at an end.

“…That concludes,” said Charley, in the same unvarying tones, “the present orders dealing with the situation. I would remind the personnel of this Expedition that at present the identity of the assassins of Commander Graeme is unknown. The civilian police are exerting every effort to investigate the matter; and it is the opinion of your officers that nothing else can be done for the moment but to give them our complete cooperation. A suspicion exists that a native, outlawed political party, known as The Blue Front, may have been responsible for the assassination. If this should be so, we must be careful to distinguish between those of this world who are actually guilty of Commander Graeme’s death and the great majority of innocent bystanders.”

He stopped speaking.

There was not a sound from the thousands of men ranked before him. —

“All right, Brigade-Major,” said Charley, looking down from the stand at the ranking officer in the formation. “Dismiss your troops.”

The Brigade-Major, who had been standing like all the rest facing the stand, wheeled about.

“Atten-shun!” he snapped, and the amplifier sensors of the stand picked his voice up and threw it out over the men in formation as they had projected Charley’s voice. “Dis-miss!”

“They little knew of brotherhood…”

Other voices rapidly picked it. up.

“… The faith of fighting men—

“Who once to prove their lie was good

“Hanged Colonel Jacques Chretien…”

—And suddenly they were all singing in the ranks facing us. It was a song of the young Colonel who had been put to death one hundred years before, when the Dorsai were just in their beginning. A New Earth city had employed a force of Dorsai with the secret intention of using them against an enemy force so superior as to surely destroy them utterly—so rendering payment for their services unnecessary while at the same time doing considerable damage to the enemy. Then the Dorsai had defeated the enemy, instead, and the city faced the necessity of paying, after all. To avoid this, the city authorities came up with the idea of charging the Dorsai commanding officer with dealing with the enemy, taking a bribe to claim victory for a battle never fought at all. It was the technique of the big lie; and it might even have worked if they had not made the mistake of arresting the commanding officer, to back up their story.

It was not a song to which I would have had any objection, ordinarily. But now—suddenly—I found it directed at me. It was at Pel, Moro, myself, that the soldiers of the Expedition were all singing it. Before, I had felt almost invisible on the stand behind Charley ap Morgan. Now, we three civilians were the focus of every pair of eyes on the field—we civilians who were like the civilians that had hanged Jacques Chretien; we who were St. Marians, like whoever had shot Kensie Graeme. It was like facing into the roaring maw of some great beast ready to swallow us up. We stood facing it, frozen.

Nor did Charley ap Morgan interfere.

He stood silent himself, waiting while they went through all the verses of the song to its end:—

. . .One fourth of Rochmont’s fighting strength-One battalion of Dorsai— Were sent by Rochmont forth alone, To bleed Helmuth, and die.

But look, look dawn from Rochmont’s heights

Upon the Helmuth plain.

At all of Helmuth’s armored force

By Dorsai checked, or slain.

Look down, look down, on Rochmont’s shame To hide the wrong she’d done, Made claim Helmuth had bribed Dorsais— No battle had been won.

To prove that lie, the Rochmont Lords Arrested Jacques Chretien, On charge he dealt with Helmuth’s Chiefs For payment to his men.

Strong-held behind her walls, Rochmont Scorned to answer them, Condemned, and at the daybreak, hanged, Young Colonel Jacques Chretien.

Bright, bright, the sun that morning rose Upon each weaponed wall. But when the sun set in the west, Those walls were leveled all.

Then soft and white the moon arose On streets and roofs unstained, But when that moon was

down once more No street nor roof remained.

No more is there a Rochmont town No more are Rochmont’s men. But stands a Dorsai monument To Colonel Jacques Chretien.

So pass the word from world to world, Alone still stands Dorsai. But while she lives, no one of hers, By foreign wrong shall die.

They little knew of brotherhood —The faith of fighting men— Who once to prove their lie was good Hanged Colonel Jacques Chretien!

It ended. Once more they were silent—utterly silent. On the platform Charley moved. He took half a step forward and the sensors picked up his voice once more and threw it out over the heads of the waiting men.

“Officers! Front and Center. Face your men!”

From the end of each rank figures moved. The commissioned and non-commissioned officers stepped forward, turned and marched to a point opposite the middle of the rank they had headed, turned once more and stood at attention,

“Prepare to fire.”

The weapons in the hands of the officers came up to waist level, their muzzles pointing at the men directly before them. The breath in my chest was sud-denly a solid thing. I could not have inhaled or exhaled if I had tried. I had heard of something like this but I had never believed it, let alone dreamed that I would be there to see it happen. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the angle of Charley ap Morgan’s face, and it was a Dorsai face in all respects now. He spoke again.

“The command to dismiss has been given,” Charley’s voice rang and reechoed over the silent men, “and not obeyed. The command will be repeated under the stricture of the Third Article of the Professional Soldier’s Covenant. Officers will open fire on any refusing to obey.”

There was something like a small sigh that ran through all the standing men, followed by the faint rattle of safeties being released on the weapons of the men in ranks. They stood facing their officers and non-commissioned officers now—fellow soldiers and old friends. But they were all professionals. They would not simply stand and be executed if it came to the final point. The breath in my chest was now so solid it hurt, like something jagged and heavy pressing against my ribs. In ten seconds we could all be dead.

“Brigade-Major,” said the level voice of Charley. “Dismiss your troops.”

The Brigade-major, who had turned once more to face Charley, when Charley spoke to him, turned back again to the parade ground of men. “Dis—” No more than in Charley’s voice was there perceptible change in the Brigade-Major’s command

from the time it had been given before, “-miss!” The formations dissolved. All at once the ranks were breaking up, the men in them turning away, the officers and non-coms lowering the weapons they had lifted to ready position at Charley’s earlier command. The long-held breath tore itself out of my lungs so roughly it ripped at my throat. I turned to

Charley but he was halfway down the steps from the platform, as expressionless as he had been all through the last few minutes. I had to half-run to catch up to him. “Charley!” I said, reaching him. He turned to look at me as he walked along. Suddenly I felt how pale and sweat dampened I was. I tried

to laugh. “Thank God that’s over,” I said. “Over?” He shook his head. “It’s not over, Tom. The enlisted men will be voting now. It’s their right.” “Vote?” The world made no sense to me, for a second. Then suddenly it made too much sense. “You

mean—they might vote to march on Blauvain, or something like mat?” “Perhaps—something like that,” he said. I stared at him. “And then?” I said. “You wouldn’t… if their vote should be to march on Blauvain—what would you do?” He looked at me almost coldly. “Lead my troops,” he said. I stopped. Standing there, I watched him walk away from me. A hand tugged at my elbow”, and I turned

around to see that Pel and Moro had caught up to me. It was Moro who had his hand on my arm. “Tom,” said Moro, “What do we do, now?” “See Padma,” I said. “If he can’t do something, I don’t know anybody who can.” Charley was not flying directly back to Blauvain. He was already in a staff meeting with his fellow officers, who were barred from the voting of the enlisted

men by the Covenant. We three civilians had to borrow a land car from the encampment motor pool. It was a silent ride, most of the way back into town. Once again I was at the controls, with Pel beside

me. Sitting behind us, just before we reached the west area of the city, Moro leaned forward to put his head between us. “Tom,” he said. “You’ll have to put your police on special duty. Pel, you’ve got to mobilize the militia

—right now.”

“Moro,” I answered—and I suddenly felt dog-tired, weary to the point of exhaustion. “I’ve got less than three hundred men, ninety-nine per cent of them without anything more exciting in the way of experience than filling out reports or taking charge at a fire, an accident or a family quarrel. They wouldn’t face those mercenaries even if I ordered them to.”

Pel laughed at him.

“Over a hundred years ago, a battalion of Dorsais took a fortified city—Rochmont—with nothing heavier than light field pieces. This is a brigade—six battalions—armed with the best weapons the Exotics can buy them—facing a city with no natural or artificial defenses at all. And you want my two thousand militiamen to try to stop them? There’s no force on St. Marie that could stop those professional soldiers.”

“At Rochmont they were all Dorsai—” Moro began.

“For God’s sake!” cried Pel. “These are Dorsai-officered, the best mercenaries you can find. Elite troops—the Exotics don’t hire anything else for fear they might have to touch a weapon themselves and damage their, enlightenment—or whatever the hell it is! Face it, Moro! If Kensie’s troops want to chew us up, they will. And there’s nothing you or I can do about it!”

Moro said nothing for a long moment. Pel’s last words had hit a near-hysterical note. When the Mayor of Blauvain did speak again, it was softly.

“I just wish to God I knew why you want just that to happen, so badly,” he said.

“Go to hell!” said Pel. “Just go-”

I slammed the car into retro and we skidded to a halt, thumping down on the grass as the air-cushion quit I looked at Pel.

“That’s something I’d like to know, too,” I said. “All right, you liked Kensie. So did I. But what we’re facing is anything from the leveling of a city to a possible massacre of a couple of hundred thousand people. All that for the death of just one man?”

Pel’s face looked bitter and sick

“We’re no good, we St. Marians,” he said, thickly. “We’re a fat little farm world that’s never done anything since it was first settled but yell for help to the Exotics every time we got into trouble. And the Exotics have bailed us out every time, only because we’re in the same solar system with them. What’re we worth? Nothing! At least the Dorsai and the Exotics have got some value—some use!”

He turned away from Moro and myself; and we could not get another word out of him.

We drove on into the city, where, to my great relief, I finally got rid of Pel and Moro both; and was able to get to Police Headquarters and take charge of things.

As I had expected, things badly needed taking care of there. As I should also have expected, I had very much underestimated how badly they needed it. I had planned to spend two or three hours getting the situation under control, and then be free to seek out Padma. But, as it ended up, it took me nearly seven straight hours to damp down the panic, straighten out the confusion, and put some purpose and order back into the operations of all my people, off-duty and otherwise, who had reported for emergency service. Actually, it was little enough we were required to do —merely patrol the streets and see that the

town’s citizens stayed off the streets and out of the way of the mercenaries. Still, that took seven hours to put into smooth operation; and at the end of that time I was still not free to go hunting for Padma, but had to respond to a series of calls for my presence by the detective crew assigned to work with the mercenaries in tracking down the assassins.

We came at last to a block of warehouses on the north side of the city; and to one warehouse in particular. Within, the large, echoing structure was empty except for a few hundred square feet of crated harvesting machinery on the first of its three floors. I found my men on the second floor in the transparent cubicles that were the building’s offices, apparently doing nothing.

“What’s the matter?” I said, when I saw them. They were not only idle, but they looked unhappy.

“There’s nothing we can do, Superintendent,” said the senior detective lieutenant present—Lee Hall, a man I’d known for sixteen years. “We can’t keep up with them, even if they’d let us.”

“Keep up?” I asked.

“Yes sir,” Lee said. “Come on, I’ll show you. They let us watch, anyway.”

He led me out of the offices up to the top floor of the warehouse, a great, bare space with a few empty crates scattered between piles of unused packing materials. At one end, portable floodlights were illuminating an area with a merciless blue-white light that made the shadows cast by men and things look solid enough to stub your toe on. He led me toward the light until a Groupman stepped forward to bar our way.

“Close enough, Lieutenant,” he said to Lee. He looked at me.

“This is Tomas Velt, Blauvain superintendent of police.”

“Honored to meet you, sir,” said the Groupman to me. “But you and the Lieutenant will have to stand back here if you want to see what’s going on.”

“What is going on?” I asked.

“Reconstruction,” said the Groupman. “That’s one of our Hunter Teams.”

I turned to watch. In the white glare of the light were four of the mercenaries. At first glance they seemed engaged in some odd ballet or mime acting. They were at little distances from one another; and first one, then another of them would move a short distance—perhaps as if he had gotten up from a nonexistent chair and walked across to an equally nonexistent table, then turned to face the others. Following which another man would move in and apparently do something at the same invisible table with him.

“The men of our Hunter Teams are essentially trackers, Superintendent,” said the Groupman quietly in my ear. “But some teams are better in certain surroundings than others. These are men of a team that works well in interiors.”

“But what are they doing?” I said.

“Reconstructing what the assassins did when they were here,” said the Groupman. “Each of three men on the team takes the track of one of the assassins, and the fourth man -watches them all as coordinator.”

“But what kind of signs are they tracking?” I asked.

“Little things, mostly.” He smiled. “Tiny things-some things you or I wouldn’t be able to see if they were pointed out to us. Sometimes there’s nothing and they have to go on guess—that’s where the coordinator helps.” He sobered. “Looks like black magic, doesn’t it? It does, even to me, sometimes, and I’ve been a Dorsai for fourteen years.”

I stared at the moving figures.

“You said—three,” I said.

“That’s right,” answered the Groupman. “There were three snipers. We’ve tracked them from the office in the building they fired from, to here. This was their headquarters—the place they moved from, to the office, just before the killing. There’s sign they were here a couple of days, at least, waiting.”

“Waiting?” I asked. “How do you know there were three and they were waiting?”

“Lots of repetitive sign. Habitual actions. Signs of camping beds set up. Food signs for a number of meals. Metal lubricant signs showing weapons had been disassembled and worked over here. Signs of a portable, private phone—they must have waited for a phone call from someone telling them the Commander was on his way in from the encampment.”

“But how do you know there were only three?”

“There’s sign for only three,” he said. “Three—all big for your world, all under thirty. The biggest man had black hair and a full beard. He was the one who hadn’t changed clothes for a week—” The Groupman sniffed the air. “Smell him?”

I sniffed hard and long.

“I don’t smell a thing,” I said.

“Hmm,” the Groupman looked grimly pleased. “Maybe those fourteen years have done me some good, after all. The stink of him’s in the air, all right. It’s one of the things our Hunter Teams followed to this place.”

I looked aside at Lee Hall, then back at the soldier.

“You don’t need my detectives at all, do you?” I said.

“No sir,” he looked me in the face. “But we assume you’d want them to stay with us. That’s all right.”

“Yes.” I said. And I left there. If my men were not needed, neither was I; and I had no time to stand around being useless. There was still Padma to talk to.

But it was not easy to locate the Outbond. The Exotic Embassy either could not or would not tell me where he was; and the Expedition Headquarters in Blauvain also claimed not to know. As a matter of ordinary police work, my own department kept track of important outworlders like the Graeme brothers

and the Outbond, as they moved around our city. But in this case, there was no record of Padma ever leaving the room in which I had last seen him with Ian Graeme, early in the day. I finally took my determination in both hands and called Ian himself to ask if Padma was with him.

So, with one of the professional soldiers in my police car to vouch for me at roadblocks, I returned to my own dark apartment; and when, alone at last, I came into the living room and turned on the light, there was Padma waiting for me in one of my own chair-floats.

The jar of finding him there was solid—more like an emotional explosion than I would have thought. It was like seeing a ghost in reality, the ghost of someone from whose funeral you have just returned. I stood staring at him.

“Sorry to startle you, Tom,” he said. “I know, you were going to have a drink and forget about everything for a few hours. Why don’t you have the drink, anyway?”

He nodded toward the bar built into a corner of the apartment living room. I never used the thing unless there were guests on hand; but it was always stocked—that was part of the maintenance agreement in the lease. I went over and punched the buttons for a single brandy and water. I knew there was no use offering Padma alcohol.

“How did you get in here?” I said, with back to him.

“I told your supervisor you were looking for me,” Padma said. “He let me in. We Exotics aren’t so common on your world here that he didn’t recognize me.”

I swallowed half the glass at a gulp, carried the drink back, and sat down in a chair opposite him. The background lighting in the apartment had gone on automatically when night darkened the windows. It was a soft light, pouring from the corners of the ceiling and from little random apertures and niches in the walls. Under it, in his blue robe, with this ageless face, Padma looked like the image of a buddah, beyond all the human and ordinary storms of life.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Padma said. “The situation being what it is, you would want to appeal to me to help you with it. So I wanted to see you away from any place where you might blame my refusal to help on outside pressures.”

“Refusal?” I said. It was probably my imagination; but the brandy and water I had swallowed seemed to have gone to my head already. I felt light-minded and unreal. “You aren’t even going to listen to me first before saying no?”

“My hope,” said Padma, “is that you’ll listen to me, first, Tom, before rejecting what I’ve got to tell you. You’re thinking that I could bring pressure to bear on Ian Graeme to move his soldiers half a world away from Blauvain, or otherwise take the situation out of its critical present phase. But the truth is I could not; and even if I could, I would not.”

“Would not,” I echoed, muzzily.

“Yes. Would not. But not just because of personal choice. For four centuries now, Tom, we students of the Exotic Sciences have been telling other men and women that our human race was committed to a

future, to the workings of history as it is. It’s true we Exotics have a calculative technique now, called ontogenetics, that helps us to resolve any present or predicted moment into its larger historical factors. We’ve made no secret of having such techniques. But that doesn’t mean we can control what will happen, particularly while other men still tend to reject the very thing we work with—the concept of a large, shifting pattern of events that involves all of us and our lives.”

“Neither do we on Mara and Kultis,” said Pad-ma. “But we do believe in a physics of human action and interaction, which we believe works in a certain direction, toward a certain goal which we now think is less than a hundred years off— if, in fact, we haven’t already reached it. Movement toward that goal has been building up for at least the last thousand years; and by now the momentum of its forces is massive. No single individual or group of individuals at the present time have the mass to oppose or turn that movement from its path. Only something greater than a human being as we know a human being might do that.”

“Sure,” I said. The glass in my hand was empty. I did not remember drinking the rest of its contents; but the alcohol was bringing me a certain easing of weariness and tension. I got up, went back to the bar, and came back with a full glass, while Padma waited silently. “Sure, I understand. You think you’ve spotted a historical trend here; and you don’t want to interfere for fear of spoiling it A fancy excuse to do nothing.”

“Not an excuse, Tom,” Padma said; and there was something different, like a deep gong-note in his voice, that blew the fumes of the brandy clear from my wits for a second and made me look at him. “I’m not telling you I won’t do anything about the situation. I’m telling you that I can’t do anything about it. Even if I tried to do something, it would be no use. It’s not for you alone that the situation is too massive; it’s that way for everyone.”

“How do you know if you don’t try?” I said. “Let me see you try, and it not work Then maybe I’d believe you.”

“Tom,” he said, “can you lift me out of this chair?”

I blinked at him. I am no Dorsai, as I think I have said, but I am large for my world, which meant in this case that I was a head taller than Padma and perhaps a quarter again the weight. Also I was undoubtedly younger; and I had worked all my life to stay in good physical condition. I could have lifted someone my own weight out of that chair with no trouble, and Padma was less than that.

“Unless you’re tied down,” I said.

“I’m not.” He stood up briefly, and then sat again. “Try and lift me, Tom.”

I put my glass down, stepped over to his float and stood behind him. I wrapped my arms around his body under his armpits, and lifted—at first easily, then with all my strength.

But not only could I not lift him, I could not budge him. If he had been a lifesized statue of stone I would have expected to feel more reaction and movement in response to my efforts.

I gave up finally, panting, and stood back from him.

“What do you weigh?” I demanded.

“No more than you think Sit down again, Tom—” I did. “Don’t let it bother you. It’s a trick, of course. No, not a mechanical trick, a physiological one—but a trick just the same, that’s been shown on stage at times, at least during the last four hundred years.”

“Stand up,” I said. “Let me try again.” He did. I did. He was still immovable. “Now,” he said, when I had given up a second time. “Try once more; and you’ll find you can lift me.” I wiped my forehead, put my arms around him, and heaved upward with all my strength. I almost threw

him against the ceiling overhead. Numbly I set him down again. “You see?” he said, reseating himself “Just as I knew you could not lift me until I let you, I know that

there is nothing I can do to alter present events here on St. Marie from their present direction. But you can.” “I can?” I stared at him, then exploded. “Then for God’s sake tell me how?” He shook his head, slowly. “I’m sorry, Tom,” he said. “But that’s just what I can’t do. I only know that, resolved to ontogenetic

terms, the situation here shows you as a pivotal character. On you, as a point, the bundle of human forces that were concentrated here and bent toward destruction by another such pivotal character, may be redirected back into the general historical pattern with a minimum of harm. I tell you this so that being aware of it, you can be watching for opportunities to redirect. That’s all I can do.”

Incredibly, with those words, he got up and went toward the door of the apartment. “Hold on!” I said, and he stopped, turning back momentarily. “This other pivotal character. Who’s he?” Padma shook his head again. “It would do you no good to know,” he said. “I give you my word he is now far away from the situation

and will not be coming back to it He is not even on the planet.” “One of the assassins of Kensie!” I said. “And they’ve gotten away, off-planet!” “No,” said Padma. “No. The men who assassinated Kensie are only tools of events. If none of them had

existed, three others would have been there in their place. Forget this other pivotal character, Tom. He was no more in charge of the situation he created than you are in charge of the situation here and now. He was simply, like you, in a position that gave him freedom of choice. Good night.”

With those last words, he was suddenly out the door and gone. To this day I cannot remember if he moved particularly swiftly; or whether for some reason I now can’t remember I simply let him go. Just-all at once I was alone.

Fatigue rolled over me like the heavy waves of some ocean of mercury. I stumbled into the bedroom, fell on my sleeping float, and that was all I remembered until—only a second later, it seemed—I woke to the hammering of my telephone’s chimes on my ears.

I reached out, fumbled at the bedside table and pushed the on button. “Velt here,” I said, thickly. “Tom—this is More. Tom? Is that you, Tom?” I licked my lips, swallowed and spoke more understandably.

“It’s me,” I said. “What’s the call for?” “Where’ve you been?” “Sleeping,” I said. “What’s the call for?” “I’ve got to talk to you. Can you come—” “You come here,” I said. “I’ve got to get up and dress and get some coffee in me before I go anyplace.

You can talk to me while I’m doing it.”

I punched off. He was still saying something at the other end of the line but just then I did not care what it was. I pushed my dead-heavy body out of bed and began to move. I was dressed and at the coffee when he

came. “Have a cup.” I pushed it at him as he sat down at the porch table with me. He took it automatically. “Tom—” he said. The cup trembled in his hand as he lifted it and he sipped hastily from it before putting it

down again. “Tom, you were in the Blue Front once, weren’t you?”

“Weren’t we all?” I said. “Back when we and it were young together; and it was an idealistic outfit aimed at putting some order and system into our world government?” “Yes, yes of course,” Moro said. “But what I mean is, if you were a member once, maybe you know

who to contact now—” I began to laugh. I laughed so hard I had to put my cup down to avoid spilling it. “Moro, don’t you know better than that?” I said. “If I knew who the present leaders of the Blue Front

were, they’d be in jail. The Blauvain police commissioner—the head law enforcement man of our capital city—is the last man the Blue Front would be in touch with nowadays. They’d come to you, first. You were a member once, too, back in college days, remember?”

“Yes,” he said miserably. “But I don’t know anything now, just as you’re saying. I thought you might have informers, or suspicions you couldn’t prove, or-”

“None of them,” I said. “All right. Why do you want to know who’s running the Blue Front, now?” “I thought I’d make an appeal to them, to give up the assassins of Kensie Graeme—to save the Blauvain people. Tom—” he stared directly at me. “Just an hour ago the enlisted men of the mercenaries took a vote on whether to demand their officers lead them on the city. They voted over ninety-four per cent, in favor. And Pel… Pel’s finally mobilized his militia; but I don’t think he means to help us. He’s been trying to get in to talk to Ian all day.”

“All day?” I glanced at the time on my wrist unit. “4:25—it’s not 4:25 pm, now?” “Yes,” said Moro, staring at me. “I thought you knew.” “I didn’t mean to sleep like this!” I came out of the chair, moving toward the door. “Pel’s trying to see

Ian? The sooner we get down and see him ourselves, the better.” So we went. But we were too late. By the time we got to Expedition Headquarters and past the junior officers to the door of the office where Ian was, Pel was already with Ian. I brushed aside the Force

Leader barring our way and walked in, followed by Moro.

Pel was standing facing Ian, who sat at a desk surrounded by stacks of filmprints. He got to his feet as Moro and I appeared. “That’ll be all right, Force-leader,” he said to the officer behind us. “Tom, I’m glad you’re here. Mr.

Mayor, though, if you don’t mind waiting outside, I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Moro had little choice but to go out again. The door shut behind him, Ian waved me to a chair beside Pel, and sat down again himself. “Go ahead, General,” he said to Pel. “Repeat what you’d started to tell me, for the benefit of Tom, here.” Pel glanced savagely at me for a second out of the edge of his eyes before answering. “This doesn’t have anything to do with the Police Commissioner of Blauvain,” he said, “or anyone else of

St. Marie.”

“Repeat,” said Ian again. He did not raise his voice. The word was simply an iron door dropped in Pel’s way, forcing him to turn back Pel glanced once more, grimly at me. “I was just saying,” he said, “if Commander Graeme would go to the encampment and speak to the

enlisted men there, he could probably get them to vote unanimously.” “Vote unanimously for what?” I asked. “For a house-to-house search of the Blauvain area,” Ian answered. “The city’s been cordoned,” Pel said quickly. “A search like that would turn up the assassins in a matter

of hours, with the whole expeditionary force searching.” “Sure,” I said, “and with the actual assassins, there’d be a few hundred suspected assassins, or people who fought or ran for the wrong reason, killed or wounded by the searchers. Even if the Blue Front didn’t

take advantage of the opportunity—which they certainly would—to start gunfights with the soldiers in the city streets.” “What of it?” said Pel, talking to Ian rather than to me. “Your troops can handle any Blue Front people.

And you’d be doing St. Marie a favor to wipe them out.” “If the whole thing didn’t develop into a wiping-out of the whole civilian population of the city,” I said. “You’re implying, Tom,” said Pel, “that the Exotic troops can’t be controlled by—” Ian cut him short. “Your suggestion, General,” he said, “is the same one I’ve been getting from other quarters. Someone else

is here with it right now. I’ll let you listen to the answer I give him.” He turned toward his desk annunciator. “Send in Groupman Whallo,” he said. He straightened up and turned back to us as the door to his office opened and in came the mercenary

noncom I had brushed past out there. In the light, I saw it was the immigrant Dorsai of the Hunter Team I had encountered—the man who had been a Dorsai fourteen years.

“Sir!” he said, stopping a few steps before Ian and saluting. Uncovered himself, Ian did not return the salute.

“Yes sir,” said Whallo. I could see him glance at and recognize me out of the corner of his eyes. “As representative of the enlisted men of the Expedition, I have been sent to convey to you the results of our latest vote on orders. By unanimous vote, the enlisted men of this command have concurred in the need for a single operation.”

“Which is?”

“That a house-to-house search of the Blauvain city area be made for the assassins of Reid Commander Graeme,” said Whallo. He nodded at lan’s desk and for the first time I saw solidigraphs there-artists’ impressions, undoubtedly, but looking remarkably lifelike of three men in civilian clothes. “There’s no danger we won’t recognize them when we find them.”

Whallo’s formal and artificial delivery was at odds with the way I had heard him speak when I had run into him at the Hunter Team site. There was, it occurred to me suddenly, probably a military protocol even to matters like this—even to the matter of a man’s death and the possible death of a city. It came as a little shock to realize it and for the first time I began to feel something of what Padma had meant in saying that the momentum of forces involved here was massive. For a second it was almost as if I could feel those forces like great winds, blowing on the present moment. —But Ian was already answering him.

“Any house-to-house search involves possible military errors and danger to the civilian population,” he was saying. “The military record of my brother is not to be marred after his death by any intemperate order from me.”

“Yes sir,” said Whallo. “I’m sorry sir; but the en-listed men of the expedition had hoped that the action would be ordered by you. Their decision calls for six hours in which you may consider the matter before our Enlisted Men’s Council takes the responsibility for the action upon itself. Meanwhile, the Hunter Teams will be withdrawn—this is part of the voted decision.”

“That, too?” said Ian.

“I’m sorry, sir. But you know,” said Whallo, “they’ve been at a dead end for some hours now. The trail was lost in traffic; and the men might be anywhere in the central part of the city.”

“Yes,” said Ian. “Well, thank you for your message, Groupman.”

“Sir!” said Whallo. He saluted again and went out.

As the door closed behind him, lan’s head turned back to face Pel and myself

“You heard, gentlemen,” he said. “Now, I’ve got work to do.”

Pel and I left. In the corridor outside, Whallo was already gone and the young Force-Leader was absent. Only Moro stood waiting for us. Pel turned on me, furiously.

“Who asked you to show up here?” he demanded.

“Moro,” I answered. “And a good thing, too. Pel, what’s got into you? You act as if you had some personal axe to grind in seeing the Exotic mercenaries level Blauvain—”

He spun away from me.

Puzzled, I watched him take a couple of long strides away from me and out of the outer office. Sud-denly, it was as if the winds of those massive forces I had felt for a moment just past in lan’s office had blown my head strangely clean, clear and empty, so that the slightest sound echoed with importance. All at once, I was hearing the echo of Pel saying those identical words as Kensie was preparing to leave the mercenary encampment for the non-existent victory dinner; and a half-recognized but long-held suspicion in me flared into a raging certainty.

I took three long strides after him and caught him. I whirled him around and rammed him up against a wall.

“It was you!” I said. “You called from the Encampment to the city just before we drove in. It was you who told the assassins we were on the way and to move into position to snipe at our car. You’re Blue Front, Pel; and you set Kensie up to be murdered!”

My hands were on his throat and he could not have answered if he had wanted to. But he did not need to. Then I heard the click of bootheels on the floor of the polished stone corridor flagging outside the office, and let go of him, slipping my hand under my uniform jacket to my beltgun.

“Say a word,” I whispered to him, “or try anything… and I’ll kill you before you can get the first syllable out. You’re coming along with us!”

The Force-leader entered. He glanced at the three of us curiously.

“Something I can do for you gentlemen?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “No, we’re just leaving.”

With one arm through Pel’s and the hand of my other arm under my jacket on the butt of my beltgun, we went out as close as the old friends we had always been, Moro bringing up the rear. Out in the corridor, with the office door behind us, Moro caught up with me on the opposite side from Pel.

“What are we going to do?” Moro whispered. Pel had still said nothing; but his eyes were like the black shadows of meteor craters on the gray face of an airless moon.

“Take him downstairs and out to a locked room in the nearest police post,” I said. “He’s a walking stick of high explosive if any of the mercenaries find out what he did. Someone of his rank involved in Kensie’s killing is all the excuse they need to run our streets red in the gutters.”

We got Pel to a private back room in Post Ninety-six, a local police center less than three minutes drive from the building where Ian had his office.

“But how can you be sure, he—” Moro hesitated at putting it into words, once we were safe in the room. He stood staring at Pel, who sat huddled in a chair, still without speaking.

“I’m sure,” I said. “The Exotic, Padma-” I cut myself off as much as Moro had done. “Never mind. The main thing is he’s Blue Front, he’s involved—and what do we do about it?”

Pel stirred and spoke for the first time since I had almost strangled him. He looked up at Moro and myself out of his grey-dead face.

“I did it for St. Marie!” he said, hoarsely. “But I didn’t know they were going to kill him! I didn’t know that. They said it was just to be shooting around the car—for an incident—”

“What’ll we do?” Moro was staring in fascinated horror at Pel.

“That was my question,” I reminded him. He stood there looking hardly in better case than Pel. “But it doesn’t look like you’re going to be much help in answering it.” I laughed, but not happily. “Padma said the choice was up to me.”

“Who? What’re you talking about? What choice?” asked Moro.

“Pel here—” I nodded at him, “knows where the assassins are hiding.”

“No,” said Pel.

“Well, you know enough so that we can find them,” I said. “It makes no difference. And outside of this room, there’s only two people on St. Marie we can trust with that information.”

“You think I’d tell you anything?” Pel said. His face was still grey, but it had firmed up now. “Do you think even if I knew anything I’d tell you? St. Marie needs a strong government to survive and only the Blue Front can give it to her. I was ready to give my life for that, yesterday. I’m still willing. I won’t tell you anything—and you can’t make me. Not in six hours.”

“What two people?” Moro asked me.

“Padma,” I said, “and Ian.”

“Ian!” said Pel. “You think he’ll help you? He doesn’t give a damn for St. Marie, either way. Did you believe that talk of his about his brother’s military record? He’s got no feelings. It’s his own military record he’s concerned with; and he doesn’t care if the mercenaries tear Blauvain up by the roots, as long as it’s done over his own objection. He’s just as happy as any of the other mercenaries with that vote. He’s just going to sit out his six hours and let things happen.”

“And I suppose Padma doesn’t care either?” Moro was beginning to sound a little ugly himself. “It was the Exotics sent us help against the Friendlies in the first place!”

“Who knows what Exotics want?” Pel retorted. “They pretend to go about doing nothing but helping other people, and never dirtying their hands with violence and so on; and somehow with all that they keep on getting richer and more powerful all the time. Sure, trust Padma, why don’t you? Trust Padma and see what happens!”

Moro looked at me uncomfortably.

“What if he’s right?” Moro said.

“What if he’s right?” I snarled at him. “Moro, can’t you see this is what St. Marie’s trouble has always been? Here’s the troublemaker we always have around—someone like Pel—whispering that the devil’s in the chimney and you—like the rest of our people always do—starting to shake at the knees and wanting to sell him the house at any price! Stay here both of you; and don’t try to leave the room.”

I went out, locking the door behind me. They were in one of a number of rooms set up behind the duty officer’s desk and I went up to the night sergeant on duty. He was a man I’d known back when I had

been in detective training on the Blauvain force, an old-line policeman named Jaker Reales.

“Got you, Tom,” said Jaker. “Leave it up to me, sir.”

“Thanks, Jaker,” I said.

I went out and back to Expedition Headquarters. It had not occurred to me to wonder what Ian would do now that his Hunter Teams had been taken from him. I found Expedition Headquarters now quietly aswarm with officers—officers who clearly were most of them Dorsai. No enlisted men were to be seen.

I was braced to argue my way into seeing Ian; but the men on duty surprised me. I had to wait only four or five minutes outside the door of lan’s private office before six Senior Commandants, Charley ap Morgan among them, filed out.

“Good,” said Charley, nodding as he saw me; and then went on without any further explanation of what he meant. I had no time even to look after him. Ian was waiting.

I went in. Ian sat massively behind his desk, waiting for me, and waved me to a chair facing him as I came in. I sat down. He was only a few feet from me, but again I had the feeling of a vast distance separating us. Even here and now, under the soft lights of this nighttime office, he conveyed, more strongly than any Dorsai I had ever seen, a sense of difference. Generations of men bred to war had made him; and I could not warm to him as Pel and others had warmed to Kensie. Far from kindling any affection in me, as he sat there, a cold wind like that off some icy and barren mountaintop seemed to blow from him to me, chilling me. I could believe Pel, that Ian was all ice and no blood; and there was no reason for me to do anything for him—except that as a man whose brother had been killed, he deserved -whatever help any other decent, law-abiding man could give him.

But I owed something to myself, too, and to the fact that we were not all villains, like Pel, on St. Marie.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” I said. “It’s about General Sinjin.”

He nodded, slowly.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come to me with that,” he said.

I stared at him.

“You knew about Pel?” I said.

“We knew someone from the St. Marie authorities had to be involved in what happened,” he said. “Normally, a Dorsai officer is alert to any potentially dangerous situation. But there was the false dinner invitation; and then the matter of the assassins happening to be in just the right place at the right time, with just the right weapons. Also, our Hunter Teams found clear evidence the encounter was no accident. As I say, an officer like Field Commander Graeme is not ordinarily killed that easily.”

It was odd to sit there and hear him speak Kensie’s name that way. Title and name rang on my ears with the strangeness one feels when somebody speaks of himself in the third person.

“But Pel?” I said.

“We didn’t know it was General Sinjin who was involved” Ian said. “You identified him yourself by coming to me about him just now.”

“Yes,” said Ian, nodding.

“I’ve known him all my life,” I said, carefully. “I

believe he’s suffered some sort of nervous breakdown over the death of your brother. You know, he admired your brother very much. But he’s still the man I grew up with; and that man can’t be easily made to do something he doesn’t want to do. Pel says he won’t tell us anything that’ll help us find the assassins; and he doesn’t think we can make him tell us inside of the six hours left before your soldiers move in to search Blauvain. Knowing him, I’m afraid he’s right.”

I stopped talking. Ian sat where he was, behind the desk, looking at me, merely waiting.

“Don’t you understand?” I said. “Pel can help us, but I don’t know of any way to make him do it.”

Still Ian said nothing.

“What do you want from me?” I almost shouted it at him, at last.

“Whatever,” Ian said, “you have to give.”

For a moment it seemed to me that there •was something like a crack in the granite mountain that he seemed to be. For a moment I could have sworn that I saw into him. But if this was true, the crack closed up immediately, the minute I glimpsed it. He sat remote, icy, waiting, there behind his desk

“I’ve got nothing,” I said, “unless you know of some way to make Pel talk”

“I have no way consistent with my brother’s reputation as a Dorsai officer,” said Ian, remotely.

“You’re concerned with reputations?” I said. “I’m concerned with the people who’ll die and be hurt in Blauvain if your mercenaries come in to hunt door-to-door for those assassins. Which is more important, the reputation of a dead man, or the lives of living ones?”

“The people are rightly your concern, Com-missioner,” said Ian, still remotely, “the professional reputation of Kensie Graeme is rightly mine.”

“What will happen to that reputation if those troops move into Blauvain in less than six hours from now?” I demanded.

“Something not good,” Ian said. “That doesn’t change my personal responsibilities. I can’t do what I shouldn’t do and I must do what I ought to do.”

I stood up.

“There’s no answer to the situation, then,” I said. Suddenly, the utter tiredness I had felt before was on me again. I was tired of the fanatic Friendlies who had come out of another solar system to exercise a purely theoretical claim to our revenues and world surface as an excuse to assault St. Marie. I was tired of the Blue Front and people like Pel. I was tired of off-world people of all kinds, including Exotics and Dorsais. I was tired, tired… It came to me then that I could walk out. I could refuse to make the decision that Padma had said I would make and the whole matter would be out of my hands. I told myself to do that, to get up and walk out; but my feet did not budge. In picking on me, events had chosen the right

idiot as a pivot point. Like Ian, I could not do what I should not do, and I must do what I ought to do.

“The Exotics,” said Ian, “force nobody.” But he stood up.

“Maybe I can talk him into it,” I said, exhaustedly. “At least, I can try.”

Once more, I would have had no idea where to find Padma in a hurry. But Ian located him in a research enclosure, a carrel in the stacks of the Blauvain library; which like many libraries on all the eleven inhabited worlds, had been Exotic-endowed. In the small space of the carrel Ian and I faced him; the two of us standing, Padma seated in the serenity of his blue robe and unchanging facial expression. I told him what we needed with Pel, and he shook his head.

“Tom,” he said, “you must already know that we who study the Exotic sciences never force anyone or anything. Not for moral reasons alone; but because using force would damage our ability to do the sensitive work we’ve dedicated our lives to doing. “That’s why we hire mercenaries to fight for us, and Cetan lawyers to handle our off-world business contracts. I am the last person on this world to make Pel talk”

“Don’t you feel any responsibility to the innocent people of this city?” I said. “To the lives that will be lost if he doesn’t?”

“Emotionally, yes,” Padma said, softly. “But there are practical limits to the responsibility of personal inaction. If I were to concern myself with all possible pain consequent upon the least, single action of mine, I would have to spend my life like a statue. I was not responsible for Kensie’s death; and I am not responsible for finding his killers. Without such a responsibility I can’t violate the most basic prohibition of my life’s rules.”

“You knew Kensie,” I said. “Don’t you owe anything to him? And don’t you owe anything to the same St. Marie people you sent an armed expedition to help?”

“We make it a point to give, rather than take,” Padma said, “just to avoid debts like that which could force us into doing what we shouldn’t do. No, Tom.

The Exotics and I have no obligation to your people, or even to Kensie.”

“—And to the Dorsai?” asked Ian, behind me.

I had almost forgotten he was there, I had been concentrating so hard on Padma. Certainly, I had not expected Ian to speak The sound of his deep voice was like a heavy bell tolling in the small room; and for the first time Padma’s face changed.

“The Dorsai…” he echoed. “Yes, the time is coming when there will be neither Exotics nor Dorsai, in the end when the final development is achieved. But we Exotics have always counted on our work as a step on the way to that end; and the Dorsai helped us up our step. Possibly, if things had gone otherwise, the Dorsai might have never been; and we would still be where we are now. But things went as they have; and our thread has been tangled with the Dorsai thread from the time your many-times removed grandfather Cletus Grahame first freed all the younger worlds from the politics of Earth…”

He stood up.

“I’ll force no one,” he said. “But I will offer Pel my help to find peace with himself, if he can; and if he finds such peace, then maybe he •will want to tell you willingly what you want to know.”

Padma, Ian and I went back to the police station where I had left Pel and Moro locked up. We let Moro out, and closed the door upon the three of us with Pel. He sat in a chair, looking at us, pale, pinch-faced and composed.

“No, Pel,” said Padma softly, pacing across the room to him as Ian and I sat down to wait. “I would not deal in hypnosis, particularly without the consent of the one to be hypnotized.”

“Well, you sure as hell haven’t got my consent!” said Pel.

Padma had reached him now and was standing over him. Pel looked up into the calm face above the blue robe.

“But try it if you like.” Pel said, “I don’t hypnotize easily.”

“No,” said Padma. “I’ve said I would not hypnotize anyone; but in any case, neither you nor anyone else can be hypnotized without his or her innate consent. All things between individuals are done by consent. The prisoner consents to his captivity as the patient consents to his surgery—the difference is only in degree and pattern. The great, blind mass that is humanity in general is like an amoebic animal. It exists by internal laws that cohere its body and its actions. Those internal laws are based upon conscious and unconscious, mutual consents of its atoms—ourselves —to work with each other and cooperate. Peace and satisfaction come to each of us in proportion to our success in such cooperation, in the forward-searching movement of the humanity-creature as a whole. Non-consent and noncooperation work against the grain. Pain and self-hate result from friction when we fight against our natural desire to cooperate…”

His voice went on. Gently but compellingly he said a great deal more, and I understood all at the time; but beyond what I have quoted so far—and those first few sentences stay printed-clear in my memory—I do not recall another specific word. I do not know to this day what happened. Perhaps I half-dozed without realizing I was dozing. At any rate, time passed; and when I reached a point where the memory record took up again, he was leaving and Pel had altered.

“I can talk to you some more, can’t I?” Pel said as the Outbond rose to leave. Pel’s voice had become clear-toned and strangely young-sounding. “I don’t mean now. I mean, there’ll be other times?”

“I’m afraid not,” Padma said. “Ill have to leave St. Marie shortly. My work takes me back to my own world and then on to one of the Friendly planets to meet someone and wind up what began here. But you don’t need me to talk to. You created your own insights as we talked, and you can go on doing that by yourself. Goodby, Pel.”

“Goodby,” said Pel. He watched Padma leave. When he looked at me again his face, like his voice, was clear and younger than I had seen it in years. “Did you hear all that, Tom?”

“I think so…” I said; because already the memory was beginning to slip away from me. I could feel the import of what Padma had said to Pel, but without being able to give it exact shape, it was as if I had intercepted a message that had turned out to be not for me, and so my mental machinery had already begun to cancel it out. I got up and went over to Pel. “You’ll help us find those assassins, now?”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course I will.”

He was able to give us a list of five places that were possible hiding places for the three we hunted. He

provided exact directions for finding each one.

“We have Hunters,” said Ian. “Those officers who are Dorsai are still with us; and there are Hunters among them.”

He stepped to the phone unit on the desk in the room and put a call in to Charley ap Morgan, at Expeditionary Headquarters. When Charley answered, Ian gave him the five locations Pel had supplied us.

“Now,” he said to me as he turned away from the phone. “We’ll go back to my office.”

“I want to come,” said Pel. Ian looked at him for a long moment, then nodded, without changing expression.

“You can come,” he said.

When we got back to the Expeditionary Headquarters building, the rooms and corridors there seemed even more aswarm with officers. As Ian had said, they were mostly Dorsai. But I saw some among them who might not have been. Apparently Ian commanded his own loyalty, or perhaps it was the Dorsai concept that commanded its own loyalty to whoever was commanding officer. We went to his office; and, sitting there, waited while the reports began to come in.

The first three locations to be checked out by the officer Hunter Teams drew blanks. The fourth showed evidence of having been used within the last twenty-four hours, although it was empty now. The last location to be checked also drew blank

The Hunter Teams concentrated on the fourth location and began to work outward from it, hoping to cross sign of a trail away from it. I checked the clock figures on my wrist unit. It was now nearing one

a.m. in the morning, local time; and the six hour deadline of the enlisted mercenaries was due to expire in forty-seven minutes. In the office where I waited with Ian, Pel, Charley ap Morgan, and another senior Dorsai officer, the air was thick with the tension of waiting. Ian and the two other Dorsai sat still; even Pel sat still. I was the one who fidgeted and paced, as the time continued to run out. The phone on lan’s desk flashed its visual signal light. Ian reached out to punch it on.

“Yes?” he said.

“Hunter Team Three,” said a voice from the desk “We have clear sign and are following now. Suggest you join us, sir.”

“Thank you. Coming,” said Ian.

We went, Ian, Charley, Pel and myself, in an Expedition Command Car. It was an eerie ride through the patrolled and deserted streets of my city. lan’s Hunter Team Three was ahead of us and led us to an apartment hotel on the upper north side of the city, in the oldest section.

The building had been built of poured cement faced with Castlemane granite. Inside, the corridors were old-fashionedly narrow and close-feeling, with dark, thick carpeting and metal Avails in imitation oak woodgrain. The soundproofing was good, however. We mounted to the seventh story and moved down the hall to suite number 415 without hearing any sound other than those we made, ourselves.

“Here,” finally said the leader of the Hunter Team, a lean, gnarled Dorsai Senior Commandant in his late

fifties. He gestured to the door of 415. “All three of them.”

stepped up to one side of the door; and, reaching out an arm, touched the door annunciator stud.

There was no response. Above the door, the half-meter square annunciator screen stayed brown and blank Ian pressed the button again. Again we waited, and there was no response. Ian pressed the stud. Holding it down, so that his voice would go with the sound of its announcing chimes

to the ears of those within, he spoke. “This is Commander Ian Graeme,” he said. “Blauvain is now under martial law, and you are under arrest in connection with the assassination of Field Commander Kensie Graeme. If necessary, we can cut our way in to you. However, I’m concerned that Held Commander Graeme’s reputation be kept free of

criticism in the matter of determining responsibility for his death. So I’m offering you the chance to come out and surrender.” He released the stud and stopped talking. There was a long pause. Then a voice spoke from the

annunciator grille below the screen, although the screen itself remained blank

“Go to hell, Graeme,” said the voice. “We got your brother; and if you try to blast your way in here, we’ll get you, too.” “My advice to you,” said Ian—his voice was cold, distant, and impersonal, as if this was something he

did every day, “is to surrender.” “You guarantee our safety if we do?” “No,” said Ian. “I only guarantee that I will see that Field Commander Graeme’s reputation is not

adversely affected by the way you’re handled.” There was no immediate answer from the screen. Behind Ian, Charley looked again at his wrist unit. “They’re playing for time,” he said. “But why? What good will that do them?” “They’re fanatics,” said Pel, softly. “Just as much fanatics as the Friendly soldiers were, only for the Blue

Front instead of for some puritan form of religion. Those three in there don’t expect to get out of this alive. They’re only trying to set a higher price on their own deaths—get something more for their dying.”

Charley ap Morgan’s wrist unit chimed. “Time’s up,” he said to Ian. “The enlisted men are moving into the suburbs of Blauvain now, to begin their search.”

Ian reached out and pushed the annunciator stud again, holding it down as he spoke to the men inside.

“Are you coming out?”

“I’ll come in and talk to you if you like,” said Ian.

“No—” began Pel out loud. I gripped his arm, and he turned on me, whispering. “Torn, tell him not to go in! That’s what they want.”

“Stay here,” I said.

I pushed forward until Charley ap Morgan put out an arm to stop me. I spoke across that arm to Ian.

“Ian,” I said, in a voice safely low enough so that the door annunciator would not pick it up. “Pel says—”

“Maybe that’s a good idea,” said the voice from the annunciator. “That’s right, why don’t you come on in, Graeme? Leave your weapons outside.”

“Tom,” said Ian, without looking either at me or Charley ap Morgan, “Stay back Keep him back, Charley.”

“Yes sir,” said Charley. He looked into my face, eye to eye with me. “Stay out of this, Tom. Backup.”

Ian stepped forward to stand square in front of the door, where a beam coming through it could go through him as well. He was taking off his sidearm as he went. He dropped it to the floor, in full sight of the screen, through the blankness of which those inside would be looking out.

“I’m unarmed,” he said.

“Of that sidepiece, you are,” said the annunciator. “Do you think we’re going to take your word for the rest of you? Strip.”

Without hesitation, Ian unsealed his uniform jacket and began to take off his clothes. In a moment or two, he stood naked in the hallway, but if the men in the suite had thought to gain some sort of moral advantage over him because of that, they were disappointed.

Stripped, he looked—like an athlete—larger and more impressive than he had, clothed. He towered over us all in the hall, even over the other Dorsai there; and with his darkly tanned skin under the lights he seemed like a massive figure carved in oak

“I’m waiting,” he said, after a moment, calmly.

“All right,” said the voice from the annunciator. “Come on in.”

He moved forward. The door unlatched and slid aside before him. He passed through and it closed behind him. For a moment we were left with no sound or word from him or the suite; then, unexpectedly, the screen lit up. We found ourselves looking over and past lan’s bare shoulders at a room in which three men, each armed with a rifle and a pair of side-arms, sat facing him. They gave no sign of knowing that he had turned on the annunciator screen, the controls of which would be hidden behind him, now that he stood inside the door, facing the room.

The center one of the three seated men laughed. He was the big, black-bearded man I had found vaguely familiar when I saw the solidigraphs of the three of them in lan’s office; and I recognized him now. He was a professional wrestler. He had been arraigned on assault charges four years ago, but lack of testimony against him had caused the charges to be dismissed. He was not as tall as Ian, but much

heavier of body; and it was his voice we had been hearing, because now we heard it again as his lips moved on the screen.

We could not see lan’s face; but he said nothing and apparently his lack of reaction was irritating to the big assassin, because he dropped his cheerful tone and leaned forward in his chair.

“Don’t you understand, Graeme?” he said. “We’ve lived and died for the Blue Front, all three of us—for the one political parry with the strength and guts to save our world. We’re dead men no matter what we do. Did you think we don’t know that? You think we don’t know what would happen to us if we were idiots enough to surrender the way you said? Your men would tear us apart; and if there was anything left of us after that, the government’s law would try us and then shoot us. We only let you in here so that we could lay you out like your twin brother, before we were laid out ourselves. Don’t you follow me, man? You walked into our hands here like a fly into a trap, never realizing.”

“I realized,” said Ian.

The big man scowled at him and the muzzle of the heat rifle he held in one thick hand, came up.

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “Whatever you think you’ve got up your sleeve isn’t going to save you. Why would you come in here, knowing what we’d do?”

“The Dorsai are professional soldiers,” said lan’s voice, calmly. “We live and survive by our reputation. Without that reputation none of us could earn our living. And the reputation of the Dorsai in general is the sum of the reputations of its individual men and women. So Field Commander Kensie Graeme’s professional reputation is a thing of value, to be guarded even after his death. I came in for that reason.”

The big man’s eyes narrowed. He was doing all the talking and his two companions seemed content to leave it that way.

“A reputation’s worth dying for?” he said.

“I’ve been ready to die for mine for eighteen years,” said lan’s voice, quietly. “Today’s no different than yesterday.”

“And you came in here—” the big man’s voice broke off on a snort. “I don’t believe it. Watch him, you two!”

“Believe or not,” said Ian. “I came in here, just as I told you, to see that the professional reputation of Held Commander Graeme was protected from events which might tarnish it. You’ll notice—” his head moved slightly as if indicating something behind him and out of our sight, “I’ve turned on your annunciator screen, so that outside the door they can see what’s going on in here.”

The eyes of the three men jerked upwards to stare at the screen inside the suite, somewhere over lan’s head. There was a blur of motion that was lan’s tanned body flying through the air, a sound of something smashing and the screen went blank again.

We outside were left blind once more, standing in the hallway, staring at the unresponsive screen and door. Pel, who had stepped up next to me, moved toward the door itself

“Stay!” snapped Charley.

The single sharp tone was like a command given to some domestic beast. Pel flinched at the tone, but stopped—and in that moment the door before us disintegrated to the roar of an explosion in the room.

It was like diving into a centrifuge filled with whirling bodies. I ducked to avoid the flying form of one of the men I had seen in the screen, but his leg slammed my head, and I went reeling, half-dazed and disoriented, into the very heart of the tumult. It was all a blur of action. I had a scrambled impression of explosions, of fire-beams lancing around me—and somehow in the midst of it all, the towering, brown body of Ian moving with the certainty and deadliness of a panther. All those he touched went down; and all who went down, stayed down.

Then it was over. I steadied myself with one hand against a half-burned wall and realized that only Ian and myself were on our feet in that room. Not one of the other Dorsai had followed me in. On the floor, the three assassins lay still. One had his neck broken. Across the room a second man lay obviously dead, but with no obvious sign of the damage that had ended his life. The big man, the ex-wrestler, had the right side of his forehead crushed in, as if by a club.

Looking up from the three bodies, I saw I was now alone in the room. I turned back into the corridor, and found there only Pel and Charley. Ian and the other Dorsai were already gone.

“Where’s Ian?” I asked Charley. My voice came out thickly, like the voice of a slightly drunken man.

“Leave him alone,” said Charley. “You don’t need him, now. Those are the assassins there; and the enlisted men have already been notified and pulled back from their search of Blauvain. What more is needed?”

I pulled myself together; and remembered I was a policeman.

“I’ve got to know exactly what happened,” I said. “I’ve got to know if it was self-defense, or…”

The words died on my tongue. To accuse a naked man of anything else in the death of three heavily armed individuals who had threatened his life, as I had just heard them do over the annunciator, was ridiculous.

“No,” said Charley. “This was done during a period of martial law in Blauvain. Your office will receive a report from our command about it; but actually it’s not even something within your authority.”

Some of the tension that had been in him earlier seemed to leak out of him, then. He half-smiled and became more like the friendly officer I had known before Kensie’s death.

“But that martial law is about to be withdrawn,” he said. “Maybe you’ll want to get on the phone and start getting your own people out here to tidy up the details.”

—And he stood aside to let me go.

One day later, and the professional soldiers of the Exotic Expeditionary Force showed their affection for Kensie in a different fashion.

His body had been laid in state for a public review in the open, main floor lobby of the Blauvain City Government building. Beginning in the grey dawn and through the cloudless day—the sort of hard, bright day that seems impatient with those who will not bury their dead and get on to further things —the mercenaries filed past the casket holding Kensie, visible at foil length in dress uniform under the transparent cover. Each one as he passed touched the casket lightly with his fingertips, or said a word to

the dead man, or both. There were over ten thousand soldiers passing, one at a time. They were unarmed, in field uniforms and their line seemed endless.

By the time noon came and went without incident, I was ready to make a guess why not. It was because there was something in the mood of the civilian crowd itself that forbade terrorism, here and now. Any Blue Front activists trying such a thing would have been smothered by the very civilians around them in whose name they were doing it.

Something of awe and pity, and almost of envy, seemed to be stirring the souls of the Blauvain people; those same people of mine who had huddled in their houses twenty hours before, in undiluted fear of the very men now lined up before them and moving slowly to the City Government building. Once more, as I stood on a balcony above the lobby holding the casket, I felt those winds of vast movement I had sensed first for a moment in lan’s office, the winds of those forces of which Padma had spoken to me. The Blauvain people were different today and showed the difference. Kensie’s death had changed them.

Then, something more happened. As the last of the soldiers passed, Blauvain civilians began to fall in behind them, extending the line. By mid-afternoon, the last soldier had gone by and the first figure in civilian clothes passed the casket, neither touching it nor speaking to it, but pausing to look with an unusual, almost shy curiosity upon the face of the body inside, in the name of which so much might have happened.

Already, behind that one man, the line of civilians was half again as long as the line of soldiers had been.

It was nearly midnight, long past the time when it had been planned to shut the gates of the lobby, when the last of the civilians had gone and the casket could be transferred to a room at Expeditionary Headquarters from which it would be shipped back to the Dorsai. This business of shipping a body home happened seldom, even in the case of mercenaries of the highest rank; but there had never been any doubt that it would happen in the case of Kensie. The enlisted men and officers of his command had contributed the extra funds necessary for the shipment. —Ian, when his time came, would undoubtedly be buried in the earth of whatever world on which he fell. Only if he happened to be at home when the time came, would that earth be soil of the Dorsai. But Kensie had been—Kensie.

“Do you know what’s been suggested to me?” asked Moro, as he, Pel and I, along with several of the Expedition’s senior officers—Charley ap Morgan among them—stood watching Kensie’s casket being brought into the room at Expedition HQ, “There’s a proposal to get the city government to put up a statue of him, here in Blauvain. A statue of Kensie.”

Neither Pel nor I answered. We stood watching the placing of the casket. For all its massive appearance, four men handled it and the body within easily. The apparently thick metal of its sides were actually hollow to reduce shipping weight. The soldiers settled it, took off the transparent weather cover and carried it out. The body of Kensie lay alone, uncovered; the profile of his face, seen from where we stood, quiet and still against the light pink cloth of the casket’s lining. The senior officers who were with us and who had not been in the line of soldiers filing through the lobby, now began to go into the room, one at a time to stand for a second at the casket before coming out again.

“It’s what we never had on St. Marie,” said Pel, after a long moment. He was a different man since Padma had talked to him. “A leader. Someone to love and follow. Now that our people have seen there is such a thing, they want something like it for themselves.” . “You Dorsai changed us,” Pel said. “Did we?” said Charley, stopping. “How do you feel about Ian now, Pel?” “Ian?” Pel frowned. “We’re talking about Kensie. lan’s just—what he always was.” “What you all never understood,” said Charley, looking from one to the other of us. “lan’s a good man,” said Pel. “I don’t argue with that. But there’ll never be another Kensie.” “There’ll never be another Ian,” said Charley. “He and Kensie made up one person. That’s what none of

you ever understood. Now half of Ian is gone, into the grave.” Pel shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t believe that. I can’t believe Ian ever needed anyone—even Kensie. He’s

never risked anything, so how could he lose anything? After Kensie’s death he did nothing but sit on his spine here insisting that he couldn’t risk Kensie’s reputation by doing anything—until events forced his hand. That’s not the action of a man who’s lost the better half of himself”

“I didn’t say better half,” said Charley, “I only said half—and just half is enough. Stop and try to feel for a moment what it would be like. Stop for a second and feel how it would be if you -were amputated down the middle—if the life that was closest to you was wrenched away, shot down in the street by a handful of self-deluded, crackpot revolutionaries from a world you’d come to rescue. Suppose it was like that for you, how would you feel?”

Pel had gone a little pale as Charley talked. When he answered his voice had a slight echo of the difference and youngness it had had after Padma had talked to him.

“I guess…” he said very slowly, and ran off into silence. “Yes?” said Charley. “Now you’re beginning to understand, to feel as Ian feels. Suppose you feel like this and just outside the city where the assassins of your brother are hiding there are six battalions of seasoned soldiers who can turn that same city—who can hardly be held back from turning that city—into another Rochmont, at one word from you. Tell me, is it easy, or is it hard, not to say that one word that will turn them loose?”

“It would be…” The words seemed dragged from Pel, “hard…” “Yes,” said Charley, grimly, “as it was hard for Ian.” “Then why did he do it?” demanded Pel. “He told you why,” said Charley. “He did it to protect his brother’s military reputation, so that not even

after his death should Kensie Graeme’s name be an excuse for anything but the highest and best of military conduct.” “But Kensie was dead. He couldn’t hurt his own reputation!”

“His troops could,” said Charley. “His troops wanted someone to pay for Kensie’s death. They wanted to leave a monument to Kensie and their grief for him, as long-lasting a monument as Rochmont has been to Jacques Chretian. There was only one way to satisfy them, and that was if Ian himself acted for them—as their agent—in dealing with the assassins. Because nobody could deny that Kensie’s brother had the greatest right of all to represent all those who had lost with Kensie’s death.”

He stopped, halted by the thin, faint smile on Charley’s face.

“Ian was our Battle Op, our strategist,” said Charley. “Just as Kensie was Field Commander, our tactician. Do you think that a strategist of lan’s ability couldn’t lay a plan that would bring him face to face, alone, with the assassins once they were located?”

“What if they hadn’t been located?” I asked. “What if I hadn’t found out about Pel, and Pel hadn’t told us what he knew?”

Charley shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Somehow Ian must have known this way would work—or he would have done it differently. For some reason he counted on help from you, Tom.”

“Me!” I said. “What makes you say that?”

“He told me so.” Charley looked at me strangely. “You know, many people thought that because they didn’t understand Ian, that Ian didn’t understand them. Actually, he understands other people unusually well. I think he saw something in you, Tom, he could rely on. And he was right, wasn’t he?”

Once more, the winds I had felt—of the forces of which Padma had spoken, blew through me, chilling and enlightening me. Ian had felt those winds as well as I had—and understood them better. I could see the inevitability of it now. There had been only one pull on the many threads entangled in the fabric of events here; and that pull had been through me to Ian.

“When he went to that suite where the assassins were holed up,” said Charley, “he intended to go in to them alone, and unarmed. And when he killed them with his bare hands, he did what every man in the Expeditionary force wanted to do. So, when that was done, the anger of the troops was lightning-rodded. Through Ian, they all had their revenge; and then they were free. Free just to mourn for Kensie as they’re doing today. So Blauvain escaped; and the Dorsai reputation has escaped stain, and the state of affairs between the inhabited worlds hasn’t been upset by an incident here on St. Marie that could make enemies out of worlds, like the Exotic and the Dorsai, and St. Marie, who should all be friends.”

He stopped talking. It had been a long speech for Charley; and none of us could think of anything to say. The last of the senior officers, all except Ian, had gone past us now, in and out of the room, and the casket was alone. Then Pel spoke.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he sounded sorry. “But even if what you say is all true, it only proves what I always said about Ian. Kensie had two mens’ feelings, but Ian hasn’t any. He’s ice and water with no blood in him. He couldn’t bleed if he wanted to. Don’t tell me any man torn apart emotionally by his twin brother’s death could sit down and plan to handle a situation so cold-bloodedly and efficiently.”

“People don’t always bleed on the outside where you can see—” Charley broke off, turning his head.

We looked where he was looking, down the corridor behind us, and saw Ian coming, tall and alone. He strode up to us, nodded briefly at us, and went past into the room. We saw him walk to the side of the casket.

Twin face gazed to twin face, the living and the dead. Under the lights of the room, with the motionless towering figure of Ian, it was as if both were living, or both were dead—so little difference there was to be seen between them. Only, Kensie’s eyes were closed and lan’s opened; Kensie’ slept while Ian waked. And the oneness of the two of them was so solid and evident a thing, there in that room, that it stopped the breath in my chest.

For perhaps a minute or two Ian stood without moving. His face did not change. Then he lifted his gaze, let go of the casket and turned about. He came walking toward us, out of the room, his hands at his sides, the fingers curled into his palms.

“Gentlemen,” he said, nodding to us as he passed, and went down the corridor until a turn in it took him out of sight.

Charley left us and went softly back into the room. He stood a moment there, then turned and called to us.

“Pel,” he said, “come here.”

Pel came; and the rest of us after him.

“I told you,” Charley said to Pel, “some people don’t bleed on the outside where you can see it.”

He moved away from the casket and we looked at it. On its edge were the two areas where Ian had laid hold of it with his hands while he stood looking down at his dead brother. There was no mistaking the places, for at both of them, the hollow metal side had been bent in on itself and crushed with the strength of a grip that was hard to imagine. Below the crushed areas, the cloth lining of the casket was also crumpled and rent; and where each fingertip had pressed, the fabric was torn and marked with a dark stain of blood.

EPILOGUE

“…So,” said the third Amanda, at last, “you see how it really was.”

Hal Mayne nodded. He lifted his head suddenly to see her staring penetratingly at him.

“Or,” she said, “do you see something more than I see, even in this?”

He opened his mouth to deny that, and found he could not.

“Maybe,” he said. Loneliness and a need to explain himself swept through him without warning, like a heavy tide. “You’ve got to understand I’m a poet. I… I handle things all the time I don’t understand. I’m almost like someone in total darkness, feeling things, sensing things, but never seeing shapes I can describe to other people.”

She breathed slowly, in and out.

“So,” she said, “there was something more to this interest of yours in the ap Morgans and the Graemes, all along.” “Yes … no!” he said, almost explosively. “You

still don’t understand. I can’t prove anything, but I can feel… connections.” His hands moved, reached out almost as if by their own wills, to grasp at the empty air in front of him.

“Connections,” he said, “between the past and the present. Between Cletus and Donal and many others, not related at all. Connections between you and the other two Amandas, and between the ap Morgans and the Graemes—and between all these things and the movement of the Splinter Culture cross-breeds—the New Kind, as they’re calling themselves now—and the rest of the human race on all the worlds. I’m Jumbling in the dark, but I’m getting there… I can feel myself getting there!”

She had relaxed. She still watched him, but no longer accusingly. “So that’s why you have to head back now, to Earth and the Final Encyclopedia,” she said. “Yes.” He looked at her starkly. “I had to leave to save my life. But now, I have to go back.

Everything on Coby, on Harmony, even everything here, keeps pointing me back there.” He reached for her hand. She let him take it, but without returning the pressure of his fingers. “Amanda,” he said urgently. “Come back with me. I don’t mean just because I want you with me.

I mean because that’s where all things are finally coming together. That’s where it all ends—or starts. You should be there—just as I have to be there. Amanda, come with me.” She sat still for a moment, then her eyes went past him. Gently, she withdrew her hand from his. “If you’re right, then I will come,” she said. “But not now, Hal. Not now. In my own good time.”