Гордон Диксон - Soldier, Ask Not

Once I had realized this, I was reassured, seeing how, interview by interview, day by day, he came closer as I wanted to the heart of the matter. That heart was the moment in which he might ask my advice, must ask me to tell him what he should do about me and with me.

Day by day and interview by interview, he became apparently more relaxed and trusting in his words with me—and more questioning.

“What is it they like to read, on those other worlds, Newsman?” he asked one day. “Just what is it they most like to hear about?”

“Heroes, of course,” I answered as lightly as he had questioned. “That’s why the Dorsai make good copy—and to a certain extent the Exotics.”

A shadow which may or may not have been intentional passed across his face at the mention of the Exotics.

“The ungodly,” he muttered. But that was all. A day or so later he brought the subject of heroes up again.

“What makes heroes in the public’s eyes?” he asked.

“Usually,” I said, “the conquering of some older, already established strong man, villain or hero.” He was looking at me agreeably, and I took a venture. “For example, if your Friendly troops should face up to an equal number of Dorsai and outfight them—”

The agreeableness was abruptly wiped out by an expression I had never seen on his face before. For a second he all but gaped at me. Then he flashed me a stare as smoking and hot as liquid basalt from a volcano’s throat.

“Do you take me for a fool?” he snapped. Then his face changed, and he looked at me curiously. “—Or are you simply one yourself?”

He gazed at me for a long, long moment. Finally he nodded.

“Yes,” he said, as if to himself. “That’s it—the man’s a fool. An Earth-born fool.”

He turned on his heel, and that ended our interview for the day.

I did not mind his taking me for a fool. It was that much more insurance against the moment when I would make any move to delude him . But, for the life of me, I could not understand what had brought such an unusual reaction from him. And that bothered me. Surely my suggestion about the Dorsai could not have been so farfetched? I was tempted to ask Jamethon, but discretion as the better part of valor held me wisely back.

Meanwhile the day came when Bright finally approached the question I knew he must ask me sooner or later.

“Newsman,” he said. He was standing, legs spread, hands locked together behind his back, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling window of his office at the Government Center and Council City, below. His back was to me.

“Yes, Eldest?” I answered. He had called me once more to his office, and I had just walked through the door. He spun around at the sound of my voice to stare flamingly at me.

“You said once that heroes are made by their defeat of some older, established heroes. You mentioned as examples of older heroes in the public gaze the Dorsai—and the Exotics.”

“That’s right,” I said, coming up to him.

“The ungodly on the Exotics,” he said, as if he mused to himself. “They use hired troops. What good to defeat hirelings—even if that were possible and easy?”

“Why not rescue someone in distress, then?” I said lightly. “That sort of thing would give you a good, new public image. Your Friendlies haven’t been known much for doing that sort of thing.”

He flicked a hard glance at me.

“Who should we rescue?” he demanded.

“Why,” I said, “there’re always small groups of people who, rightly or wrongly, think they’re being imposed on by the larger groups around them. Tell me, don’t you ever get approached by small dissident groups wanting to hire your soldiers on speculation for revolt against their established government—” I broke off. “Why, of course you do. I was forgetting New Earth and the North Partition of Altland.”

“We gained little credit in the eyes of the other worlds by way of our business with the North Partition,” said Bright, harshly. “As you well know!”

“Oh, but the sides were about equal there,” I said. “What you’ve got to do is help out some really tiny minority against some selfish giant of a majority—say, something like the miners on Coby against the mine owners.”

“Coby? The miners?” He darted me a hard glance, but this was a glance I had been waiting for all these days and I met it blandly. He turned and strode over to stand behind his desk. He reached down and half-lifted a sheet of paper—it looked like a letter—that lay on his desk. “As it happens, I have had an appeal for aid on a purely speculative basis by a group—”

He broke off, laid the paper down and lifted his head to look at me.

“A group like the Coby miners?” I said. “It’s not the miners themselves?”

“No,” he said. “Not the miners.” He stood silent a moment, then he came back around the desk and offered me his hand. “I understand you’re about to leave.”

“I am?” I said.

“Have I been misinformed?” said Bright. His eyes burned into mine. “I heard that you were leaving for Earth on a spaceliner this evening. I understood passage had already been booked by you.”

“Why—yes,” I said, reading the message clear in the tone of his voice. “I guess I just forgot. Yes, I’m on my way.”

“Have a good trip,” said Bright. “I’m glad we could come to a friendly understanding. You can count on us in the future. And we’ll take the liberty of counting on you in return.”

“Please do,” I said. “And the sooner the better.”

“It will be soon enough,” said Bright.

We said good-bye again and I left for my hotel. There, I found my things had already been packed; and, as Bright had said, passage had already been booked for me on a spaceliner leaving that evening for Earth. Jamethon was nowhere to be seen.

Five hours later, I was once more between the stars, shifting on my way back toward Earth.

Five weeks later, the Blue Front on St. Marie, having been secretly supplied with arms and men by the Friendly worlds, erupted in a short but bloody revolt that replaced the legal government with the Blue Front leaders.

This time I did not ask for an interview with Piers Leaf. He sent to ask for me. As I went through the Guild Hall and up the elevator tube to his office, heads turned among the cloaked members I passed. For in the two years since the Blue Front leaders had seized power on St. Marie, much had changed for me.

I had had my hour of torment in that last interview with my sister. And I had had, while returning from that to Earth, the first dream of my revenge. Afterward, I had taken the two steps, one on St. Marie, one on Harmony, to set that revenge in motion. But still, even with those things done, I had not yet changed inside me. For change takes time.

It was the last two years that had really changed me—that had brought Piers Leaf to call upon me, that had caused the heads above the capes to turn as

I passed. For in those years the power of my understanding had come full upon me, in such measure that it now seemed by contrast to have been a weak, newborn and latent thing, even up through the moment in which I shook hands and said farewell to Eldest Bright, three years before.

I had dreamed my primitive dream of a revenge, sword in hand, going to a meeting in the rain. Then for the first time, I had felt the pull of it, but the reality I felt now was far stronger, stronger than meat or drink or love—or life itself.

They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams—and still calls for more.