Гордон Диксон - Soldier, Ask Not

“Yes,” he muttered, staring at me. “Yes.”

“Consequently, what course remains open to those who would save St. Marie from her present government?” I went on. “Since all legal avenues of recourse are stopped up, the only way left, it may seem to brave men, strong men, is to set aside normal procedure in such times of trial. If there are no constitutional ways to remove the men presently holding the reins of government, they may end up being removed otherwise, for the ostensible good of the whole world of St. Marie and everyone on it.”

He stared at me. His lips moved a little, but he said nothing. Under the white eyebrows, his faded blue eyes seemed to be popping slightly.

“In short—a bloodless coup d’état, a direct and forcible removal from office of these bad leaders seems to be the only solution left for those who believe this planet needs saving. Now, we know—”

“Wait—” broke in O’Doyne, booming. “I must tell you here and now, Newsman, that my silence mustn’t be construed as giving consent to any such speculation. You shall not report—”

“Please,” I interrupted in my turn, holding up a hand. He subsided rather more easily than one might have expected. “This is all perfectly theoretical supposition on my part. I don’t suppose it has anything to do with the real situation.” I hesitated. “The only question in this projection of the situation—theoretical situation—is the matter of implementation. We realize that as far as numbers and equipment, forces of the Blue Front outnumbered a hundred to one in the last election is hardly to be compared with the planetary forces of the St. Marie Government.”

“Our support—our grass-roots’ support—”

“Oh, of course,” I said. “Still, there’s the question of actually taking any physically effective action in the situation. That would take equipment and men—particularly men. By which I mean, of course, military men able either to train raw native troops, or themselves to take powerful action—”

“Mr. Olyn,” said O’Doyne, “I must protest such talk. I must reject such talk. I must”—he had gotten up to pace the room, and I saw him going back and forth, with his arms waving—“I must refuse to listen to such talk.”

“Forgive me,” I said. “As I mentioned, I’m only playing with a hypothetical situation. But the point I’m trying to get at—”

“The point you’re trying to gel at doesn’t concern me, Newsman!” said O’Doyne, halting in front of me with his face stern. “The point doesn’t concern us in the Blue Front.”

“Of course not,” I said soothingly. “I know it doesn’t. Of course, the whole matter is impossible.”

“Impossible?” O’Doyne stiffened. “What’s impossible?”

“Why, the whole matter of a coup d’état,” I said. “It’s obvious. Any such thing would require outside help—the business of militarily trained men, for example. Such military men would have to be supplied by some other world—and what other world would be willing to lend valuable troops on speculation to an obscure out-of-power political party on St. Marie?”

I let my voice dwindle off and sat smiling, gazing at him, as if I expected him to answer my final question. And he sat staring back at me as if he expected me to answer it myself. It must have been a good twenty seconds that we sat in mutually expectant silence before I broke it once more, getting up as I did so.

“Obviously,” I said, with a touch of regret in my voice, “none. So I must conclude we’ll be seeing no marked change of government or alteration in relations with the Exotics after all on St. Marie in the near future. Well”—and I held out my hand—“I must apologize for being the one to cut this interview short, Mr. O’Doyne; but I see I’ve lost track of the time. I’m due at Government house across the city in fifteen minutes, for an interview with the President, to get the other side of the picture; and then I’ll have to rush to get back to the spaceport in time to leave this evening for Earth.”

He rose automatically and shook my hand.

“Not at all,” he began. His voice rose to a boom momentarily, and then faltered back to ordinary tones. “Not at all—it’s been a pleasure acquainting you with the true situation here, Newsman.” He let go of my hand, almost regretfully.

“Good-bye, then,” I said.

I turned to go and I was halfway to the door when his voice broke out again behind me.

“Newsman Olyn—”

I stopped and turned.

“Yes?” I said,

“I feel”—his voice boomed out suddenly—“I have a duty to ask you—a duty to the Blue Front, a duty to my party to require you to tell me of any rumors you might have heard concerning the identity of any world—any world—ready to come to the aid of good government here on St. Marie. We are your readers here, too, on this world, Newsman. You also owe us information. Have you heard of some world which is—reported, rumored, what have you—to be ready to extend aid to a grass-roots’ movement on St. Marie, to throw off the Exotic yoke and ensure equal representation among our people?”

I looked back at him. I let him wait for a second or two.

“No,” I said. “No, Mr. O’Doyne, I haven’t.”

He stood, unmoving, as if my words had fixed him in position, legs spread a little wide, chin high, challenging me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Good-bye.”

I went out. I do not think he even answered my farewell.

I went across to Government house and spent a twenty minutes full of reassuring, pleasant platitudes in interview with Charles Perrinni, President of the St. Marie government. Then I returned, by way of New San Marcos and Joseph’s Town to the spaceport and the spaceliner for Earth.

I paused only to check my mail on Earth and then transshipped immediately for Harmony, and the site on that planet of the United Council of Churches, which together governed both Friendly worlds of Harmony and Association. I spent five days in the city there, cooling my heels in the offices and wardrooms of minor officers of their so-called Public Relations Bureau.

On the sixth day, a note I had sent immediately on arriving to Field Commander Wassel paid its dividend. I was taken to the Council building, itself; and, after being searched for weapons—there were some violent sectarian differences between Church groups on the Friendly worlds themselves, and they made no exceptions, evidently, even for Newsmen—I was admitted to a lofty-ceilinged office with bare walls. There, surrounded by a few straight-backed chairs, in the middle of the black-and-white tile of the floor, sat a heavy desk with the seated man behind it dressed entirely in black.

The only white things about him were his face and hands. All else was covered. But his shoulders were as square and broad as a barn door and above them his white face had eyes as black as the clothing, which seemed to blaze at me. He got up and came around the desk, towering half a head over me, to offer his hand.

“God be with you,” he said.

Our hands met. There was the hint of a hard touch of amusement in the thin line of his straight mouth; and the glance of his eyes seemed to probe me like twin doctor’s scalpels. He held my hand, not hard, but with the hint of a strength that could crush my fingers as if in a vise, if he chose.

I was face to face, at last, with the Eldest of that Council of Elders who ruled the combined churches of Harmony and Association, him who was called Bright, First among the Friendlies.

“You come well recommended by Field Commander Wassel,” he said after he had shaken my hand. “An unusual thing for a Newsman.” It was a statement, not a sneer; and I obeyed his invitation—almost more order than invitation—to sit, as he went back around to sit down behind his desk. He faced me across it. There was power in the man, the promise of a black flame. Like the promise, it suddenly occurred to me, of the flame latent in the gunpowder, stored in 1687 by the Turks within the Parthenon, when a shell fired by the Venetian army under Morosini exploded the black grains and blew out the center of that white temple. There had always been a special dark corner of hatred in me for that shell and that army—for if the Parthenon had been living refutation of Mathias’ darkness to me as a boy, the destruction wrought by that shell had been evidence of how that darkness conquered, even in the heart of light.