Гордон Диксон - Soldier, Ask Not

Now they knew who might be—a Newsman and his assistant. Both noncombatants, as I was quick to point out to them. Nevertheless the spring-rifles remained steadily aimed at us.

“Damn your eyes!” I told them. “Can’t you see I need medical attention? Get me to one of your field hospitals right away!”

They looked back at me with startlingly innocent eyes in smooth young faces. The one on the right wore the single collar mark of a lance-private, the other was an ordinary battle-class private soldier. Neither one of them was out of his teens.

“We have no orders to turn aside and return to a field hospital,” said the lance-private, speaking for both of them, as the-barely-superior in rank. “I can only conduct you to a gathering spot for prisoners, where no doubt other measures will be taken for your care.” He stepped back, his rifle still aimed at us. “Do thou help the other to aid this wounded man along, Greten,” he said dropping into the cant to speak to his partner. “Take his other side and I will follow with both our weapons.”

The other soldier passed over his spring-rifle and between him and Dave, I began getting over the ground a little more comfortably, although the rage still seethed and bubbled in me. They brought us to a clearing finally, not an actual grass-filled clearing exposed to the sun, but a spot where one huge tree had fallen and left open a sort of glade among the other giants. Here, there were perhaps twenty or so dejected-looking Cassidans, disarmed and being held under guard by four young Friendlies like those who had captured us.

Dave and the young Friendly soldier sat me down carefully with my back to the stump of the huge fallen tree. Then Dave was herded over to join the rest of the uniformed Cassidans, who were backed against the tall trunk of the fallen and moldering tree itself, with the four armed Friendly guards facing them. I shouted that Dave should be left with me as a non-combatant, pointing out his white armband and lack of insignia. But all six of the men in black uniforms ignored me.

“Who hath rank here?” asked the lance-private of the four guards.

“I am senior,” answered one of them, “but my rank is less than thine.”

He was, in fact, a plain battle-private. However, he was well into his twenties, plainly older than the rest of them, and his quick disclaimer of authority had the ring of the experienced soldier, who has learned not to volunteer for things.

“This man is a Newsman,” said the lance-private, indicating me, “and does claim the other under his protection. Certain the Newsman needeth medical attention; and though none of us can take him to the nearest field hospital, maybe thou canst call his case to the attention of higher authority over thy communicator,”

“We have none,” said the older soldier, “Message center is two hundred meters distant.”

“I and Greten will remain to assist thy guard while one of you go to your message center.”

“There was no provision “—the older, battle-private looked stubborn—“in our orders for one of us to leave for such a purpose.”

“Surely this is a special case and situation?”

“There was no provision.”

“But—”

“I tell thee, there was no provision made for this!” the battle-private shouted at him. “We can do nothing until an officer or a Groupman comes!”

“Will he come shortly?” The lance-private had been shaken by the vehemence of the objections of the older man. He glanced over at me worriedly; and I thought that perhaps he was beginning to think he had made a mistake in even mentioning medical help for us. But I had underestimated him. His face was a little pale, but he spoke evenly enough to the older man.

“I do not know,” answered the other.

“Then I myself will go to your message center. Wait here, Greten.”

He shouldered his spring-rifle and went off. We never saw him again.

Meanwhile, the fury and the body adrenalin that had helped me fight the pain of the hole drilled through my kneecap and the flesh and nerves and bone beyond it were beginning to wear off. I no longer felt the recurrent stab of agony as I tried to move the leg, but a swelling, steady ache was beginning to send billows of pain up my thigh from it—or so it seemed—and this was making me lightheaded. I began to wonder if I could stand it—and then, suddenly, with the feeling of stupidity that hits you when you realize all at once that what you have been searching for has been right before your eyes all this time, I remembered my belt.

Clipped to my belt, as to the belt of all soldiers, was a field-medication kit. Almost ready to laugh in spite of the pain, I reached for it now, fumbled it open, thumbed out two of the octagonal pills I found there—unaccountably, it was growing dark under the trees where we were, so that I could not make out their red color, but their shape was identity enough. It had been designed for just that purpose.

I chewed and swallowed them dry. Off in the distance, it seemed, I heard Dave’s voice, unaccountably shouting. But, swift as cyanide on the tongue, the anesthetic, tranquilizing effect of the pain pills was sweeping through me. The pain was washed away before it, leaving me feeling whole, and clean and new—and unconcerned about anything beyond the peace and comfort of my own body.

Once more I heard Dave shouting. This time I understood him, but the message of his shouting had no power to disturb me. He was calling that he had already given me the pain pills from his own kit, when I had passed out twice before. He was shouting that I had now laken an overdose, that someone should help me. Distant, also, at the same time, the grove grew quite dark and there was a roll like thunder overhead, and then I heard, as one hears some distant, charming symphony, the patter of millions of raindrops on the millions of leaves far overhead.

When I came back to myself again, for a while I paid very little attention to anything around me, for I was cramped and nauseated, with the aftereffects of the drug overdose. My knee no longer hurt if it was not moved, but it had swollen and grown stiff as a steel rod; and the slightest movement of it brought a jolt of pain that shook me like a blow.

I vomited and began slowly to feel better internally. Slowly, I began to be aware once more of what was going on around me. I was wet to the skin, for the rain, after being held up a little by the leaves overhead, had worked its way down to us. Off a little way by the trees, both the prisoners and the guards made a sodden group. There was a newcomer in the black uniform of the Friendlies. He was a Groupman, middle-aged, lean and lined heavily in the face; and he had taken the battle-private called Greten aside in my direction, evidently to argue with him.

Above us, in the little openings between the tree branches that had been left by the falling of the giant tree that had produced the forest glade, the sky had lightened after the thunderstorm; but though it was cloudless, it was all flushed now with the crimson of sunset. To my drug-distorted vision, that red came down and painted the outlines of the wet-dark figures of the gray-clad prisoners, and glittered the soaked black uniforms of the Friendlies.

Red and black, black and red, they were like some figures in a stained-glass window, under the huge, over-arching frame of the shadow-dark giants that were the trees. I sat there, chilled by my own heavy, damp clothes, staring at the Groupman and the battle-private in their argument. And gradually their words, low-pitched so that they would not carry to the prisoners, but plain to my closer ears, began to make sense to me.

“Thou art a child!” the Groupman was snarling. He lifted his head a little with the vehemence of his emotion; and the sunset sky reached down to illuminate his face with red, so that I saw it clearly for the first time—and saw in its starved features and graven lines the same sort of harsh and utter fanaticism I had found in the Groupman at Friendly Battle Headquarters who had turned down the chance of a pass for Dave.