Гордон Диксон - Soldier, Ask Not

As I handed my Credentials across the desk to him, the glare of the light over the desk came full in my eyes, blinding me. I stepped back and blinked at his blurred face. As it came back into focus I saw it for a moment as if it were older, harsher, twisted and engraved with the lines of years of fanaticism, like a face I remembered standing over the murdered prisoners on New Earth.

Then my eyes refocused completely, and I saw him as he actually was. Dark-faced, but thin with the thinness of youth rather than that of starvation. He was not the face burned in my memory. His features were regular to the point of being handsome, his eyes tired and shadowed; and I saw the straight, weary line of his mouth above the still, self-controlled stiffness of his body, smaller and slighter than mine.

He held the Credentials without looking at them. His mouth quirked a little, dryly and wearily, at the corners. “And no doubt, Mr. Olyn,” he said, “you’ve got another pocket filled with authorities from the Exotic worlds to interview the mercenary soldiers and officers they’ve hired from the Dorsai and a dozen other worlds to oppose God’s Chosen in War?”

I smiled. Because it was good to find him as strong as that, to add to my pleasure of breaking him.

I looked across the ten feet or so of distance that separated us. The Friendly Groupman who had killed the prisoners on New Earth had also spoken of God’s Chosen.

“If you’ll look under the papers directed at you,” I said, “you’ll find them. The News Services and its people are impartial. We don’t take sides.”

“Right,” said the dark young face opposing me, “takes sides.”

“Yes, Commandant,” I said. “That’s right. Only sometimes it’s a matter of debate where Right is. You and your troops here now are invaders on the world of a planetary system your ancestors never colonized. And opposing you are mercenary troops hired by two worlds that not only belong under the Procyon suns but have a commitment to defend the smaller worlds of their system—of which St. Marie is one. I’m not sure Right is on your side.”

He shook his head slightly and said, “We expect small understanding from those not Chosen.” He transferred his gaze from me to the papers in his hand.

“Mind if I sit down?” I said. “I’ve got a bad leg.”

“By all means.” He nodded to a chair beside his desk and as I sat down, seated himself. I looked across the papers on the desk before him and saw, standing to one side, the solidograph of one of the windowless high-peaked churches the Friendlies build. It was a legitimate token for him to own, but there just happened to be three people, an older man and woman and a young girl of about fourteen, in the foreground of the image. All three of them bore a family resemblance to Jamethon. Glancing up from my Credentials he saw me looking at them; and his gaze shifted momentarily to the graph and away again, as if he would protect it.

“I’m required, I see,” he said, drawing my eyes back to him, “to provide you with cooperation and facilities. We’ll find quarters for you here. Do you need a car and driver?”

“Thanks,” I said. “That commercial car outside will do. And I’ll manage my own driving.”

“As you like.” He detached the papers directed to him, passed the rest back to me and leaned toward a grille in his desktop. “Groupman.”

“Sir,” the grille answered promptly.

“Quarters for a single male civilian. Parking assignment for a civilian vehicle, personnel,”

“Sir.”

The voice from the grille clicked off. Jamethon Black looked across his desk at me. I got the idea he was waiting for my departure.

“Commandant,” I said, putting my Credentials back in their case, “two years ago, your Elders of the United Churches on Harmony and Association found the planetary government of St. Marie in default of certain disputed balances of credit, so they sent an expedition in here to occupy and enforce payment. Of that expedition, how much in the way of men and equipment do you have left?”

“That, Mr. Olyn,” he said, “is restricted military information.”

“However”—and I closed the case—“you, with the regular rank of Commandant, are acting Commander of Forces for the remnants of your expedition. That position calls for someone about five ranks higher than you. Do you expect such an officer to arrive and take charge?”

“I’m afraid you’d have to ask that question of Headquarters on Harmony, Mr. Olyn.”

“Do you expect reinforcements of personnel and more supplies?”

“If I did”—his voice was level—“I would have to consider that restricted information, too.”

“You know that it’s been pretty widely mentioned that your General Staff on Harmony has decided that this expedition to St. Marie is a lost cause? But that to avoid loss of face they prefer you here to be cut up, instead of withdrawing you and your men.”

“I see,” he said.

“You wouldn’t care to comment?”

His dark, young, expressionless face did not change. “Not in the case of rumors, Mr. Olyn.”

“One last question then. Do you plan to retreat westward, or surrender when the spring offensive of the Exotic mercenary forces begins to move against you?”

“The Chosen in War never retreat,” he said. “Neither do they abandon, or suffer abandonment by, their Brothers in the Lord.” He stood up. “I have work I must get back to, Mr. Olyn.”

I stood up, too. I was taller than he was, older, and heavier-boned. It was only his almost unnatural composure that enabled him to maintain his appearance of being my equal or better.

“I’ll talk to you later, perhaps, when you’ve got more time,” I said.

“Certainly.” I heard the office door open behind me. “Groupman,” he said, speaking past me, “take care of Mr. Olyn.”

The Groupman he had turned me over to found me a small concrete cubicle with a single high window, a camp bed and a uniform cabinet. He left me for a moment and returned with a signed pass.

“Thanks,” I said as I took it. “Where do I find the Headquarters of the Exotic forces?”

“Our latest advice, sir,” he said, “is that they’re ninety kilometers east of here. New San Marcos.” He was my height, but, like most of them, half a dozen years younger than I, with an innocence that contrasted with the strange air of control they all had.

“San Marcos.” I looked at him. “I suppose you enlisted men know your General Headquarters on Harmony has decided against wasting replacements for you?”

“No, sir,” he said. I might have commented on the rain for all the reaction he showed. Even these boys were still strong and unbroken. “Is there somewhat else?”

“No,” I said. “Thanks.”

He went out. And I went out, to get in my car and head ninety kilometers east to New San Marcos. I reached it in about three-quarters of an hour. But I did not go directly to find the Exotic Field Headquarters. I had other fish to fry.

These took me to the Wallace Street Jewelers. There, three shallow steps down from street level, an opaqued door let me into a long, dim-lighted room filled with glass cases. There was a small elderly man at the back of the store behind the final case and I saw him eyeing my correspondent’s cloak and badge as I got closer.

“Sir?” he said as I stopped across the case from him. He raised gray, narrow old eyes in a strangely smooth face to look at me.

“I think you know what I represent,” I said. “All worlds know the News Services. We’re not concerned with local politics.”

“Sir?”

“You’ll find out how I learned your address anyway.” I kept on smiling at him. “So I’ll tell you it was from a spaceport auto-dispatcher named Imera. I promised him protection for telling me. We’d—appreciate it if he remains well and whole.”