Poul Anderson - No Truce with Kings

“Not so, Mwyr. Consider these ones with whom we, as you say, meddling. Consider what use they made nuclear energy when they had it. At the rate they are going, they will have it again within a century or two. Not long after that they will be building spaceships. Even granting that time lag attenuates the effects of interstellar contact, total effects are cumulative. So do you wish such a band of carnivores turned loose on the galaxy?”

“No, let them become inwardly civilized first; then we will see if they can be trusted. If not, at least they will be happy on their own planet, in a mode of life designed for them by the Great Science. Remember, they have an imemmorial aspiration toward peace on earth; but that is something they will never achieve by themselves. I do not pretend to be a very good person, Mwyr! Yet this work that we are doing makes me feel not altogether useless in the cosmos!”

Promotion was fast that year, casualties being so high. Captain Thomas Danielis was raised to major for his conspicuous part in putting down the revolt of the Los Angelos station. Soon after occurred the Battle of Maricopa, when loyalists failed bloodily to break the stranglehold of the Brodsky rebels on the San Joaquin Valley, and he was brevetted lieutenant colonel. The army was ordered northward and marched wearily under the coast ranges, half expecting attack from ther East. But the Brodskyites seemed too busy consolidating their latest gains. The trouble came from guerrillas with the hedgehog resistance of bossman Stations. After one fairly stiff clash, they stopped near Pinnacles for a breather.

Danielis made his way through camp, where tents stood in neat rows between the guns and men lay about dozing, talking and gambling, staring at the blank blue sky. The air was hot, pungent with cookfire smoke, horses, mules, dung, sweat, and oil; the green of the hills that lifted around the site was edging toward summer brown. He was idle until time for the conference the general had called, but restlessness drove him. Now I’m a father, he thought, and I’ve never seen my kid. I’m lucky, he reminded himself. I’ve got my life and limbs . He remembered Jacobsen dying in his arms at Maricopa. You wouldn’t have thought the human body could hold so much blood. Though maybe one was up longer human when the pain was so great that one could do nothing but shriek until the darkness came.

And I used to think war was glamorous. Hunger, thirst, inaction, terror, mutilation, death, and forever the sameness of boredom grinding you down to an ox. ... I’ve had it. I’m going into business after the war. Economic integration, when the bossman system breaks up, yes, there’ll be a lot of ways for a man to get ahead, but decently, without a weapon in his hand —Danielis realized he was repeating thoughts that were months old. What the hell else was there to think about, though?

The large tent where prisoners were interrogated lay near his path. A couple of privates were conducting a man inside. The fellow was blond, burly, and sullen. He wore a sergeant’s stripes, but otherwise his only item of uniform was the badge of Warden Echevarry, bossman in this part of the coastal mountains. A lumberjack in peacetime, Danielis guessed from the look of him; a soldier in a private army whenever the interests of Echevarry were threatened; captured in yesterday’s engagement.

On impulse, Danielis followed. He got into the tent as Captain Lambert, chubby behind a portable desk, finished the preliminaries, and blinked in the sudden gloom.

“Oh.” The intelligence officer started to rise. “Yes, sir?”

“At ease,” Danielis said. “Just thought I’d listen in.”

“Well, I’ll try to put on a good show for you.” Lambert reseated himself and looked at the prisoner, who stood with hunched, shoulders and widespread legs between his guards. “Now, sergeant, we’d like to know a few things.”

“I don’t have to say nothing except name, rank, and town,” the man growled. “You got those.”

“Um-m-m, that’s questionable. You aren’t a foreign soldier, you’re in rebellion against the government of your own country.”

“The hell I am! I’m an Echevarry man.”

“So what?”

“So my Judge is whoever Echevarry says. He says Brodsky. That makes you the rebel.”

“The law’s been changed.”

“Your mucking Fallon got no right to change any laws. Especially part of the Constitution. I’m no hillrunner, Captain. I went to school some. And every year our Warden reads people the Constitution.”

“Times have changed since it was drawn,” Lambert. His tone sharpened. “But I’m not going to argue with you. How many riflemen and how many archers in your company?”

Silence.

“We can make things a lot easier for you,” Lambert said. “I’m not asking you to do anything treasonable. All I want is to confirm some information I’ve already got.”

The man shook his head angrily.

Lambert gestured. One of the privates stepped behind the captive, took his arm, and twisted a little.

“Echevarry wouldn’t do that to me,” he said through white lips.

“Of course not,” Lambert said. “You’re his man.”

“Think I wanna be just a number on some list in Frisco? Damn right I’m my bossman’s man!”

Lambert gestured again. The private twisted harder.

“Hold on, there,” Daniels barked. “Stop that!”

The private let go, looking surprised. The prisoner drew a sobbing breath.

“I’m amazed at you, Captain Lambert,” Danielis said. He felt his own face reddening. “If this has been your usual practice, there’s going to be a court-martial.”

“No, sir,” Lambert said in a small voice. “Honest. Only ... they don’t talk. Hardly any of them. What’m I supposed to do?”

“Follow the rules of war.”

“With rebels?”

“Take that man away,” Danielis ordered. The privates made haste to do so.

“Sorry, sir,” Lambert muttered. “I guess ... I guess I’ve lost too many buddies. I hate to lose more, simply for lack of information.”

“Me Too.” A compassion rose in Danielis. He sat down on the table edge and began to roll a cigarette. “But you see, we aren’t in a regular war. And so, by a curious paradox, we have to follow the conventions more carefully than ever before.”

“I don’t quite understand, sir.”

“Danielis finished the cigarette and gave it to Lambert: olive branch or something. He started another for himself. The rebels aren’t rebels by tbeir own lights,” he said. “They’re being loyal to a tradition that we’re trying to curb, eventually to destroy. Let’s face it, the average bossman is a pretty good leader. He may be descended from some thug who grabbed power by strong-arm methods during the chaos, but now his family’s integrated itself with the region he rules. He knows it, and its people, inside out. He’s there in the flesh, a symbol of the community and its achievements, its folkways and essential independence. If you’re in trouble, you ’t have to work through some impersonal bureaucracy, you go direct to your bossman. His duties are as clearly defined as your own, and a good deal more demanding, to balance his privileges. He leads you in battle and in the ceremonies that give color and meaning to life. Your fathers and theirs have worked and played together for two or three hundred years. The land is alive with the memories of them. You and him belong .

“Well, that has to be swept away, so we can go on to a higher level. But we won’t reach that level by alienating everyone. We’re not a conquering army; we’re more like the Householder Guard putting down a riot in some city. The opposition is part and parcel of our own society.”