William Tenn - The Deserter

That is true, that is so! The Jovian’s thought came down emphatically on his mind. And now, friend, brood-brother, whatever you may choose to call yourself, please let me know what kind of creature I have given this weapon to. Let me know what he has done in the past with power, what he may be expected to do in hatching cycles yet to come. Let me know through your mind and your memories and your feelings — for you and I understand each other.

Mardin let him know.

…to the nearest legal representative of the entire human race. As the result of preliminary interrogation by the military authorities a good deal was learned about the life and habits of the enemy. Unfortunately, in the course of further questioning, the Jovian evidently came to regret being taken alive and opened the valves of the gigantic tank which was his space suit, thus committing suicide instantly and incidentally smothering his human interpreter in a dense cloud of methane gas. Major Igor Mardin, the interpreter, has been posthumously awarded the Silver Lunar Circlet with doubled jets. The Jovian’s suicide is now being studied by space fleet psychologists to determine whether this may not indicate an unstable mental pattern which will be useful to our deep-space armed forces in the future…

“The Deserter” is by way of being a small monument to my father, Aaron-David Klass, who was a minor Socialist Party official in the England of 1914. When all the socialist parties of Europe dishonored their pre-1914 pledges to call an international general strike and never to vote for war credits in case of war, my father took it upon his five-foot, two-inch self to right the balance.

He published signed manifestoes declaring that his conscience would not let him do other than publicly desert if he were drafted. He urged all other workingmen to do the same.

He was drafted.

He publicly deserted.

He was found and brought back in chains for a court martial. After escaping, through the help of rank-and-file socialists who also had been drafted and who had attended his lectures, he spent the balance of the war in a windowless attic room, writing highly subversive pacifist pamphlets. He eventually fled to the United States, entering it as an illegal alien, a status that was not changed until 1945—when his son was drafted for another war.

Written 1952 / Published 1953