Gordon Dickson - Dorsai!

A slight, cold, galvanic shiver ran down Donal’s spine.

“A Select of Kultis won’t lie under oath,” he said. “She—”

“I see no reason to involve Anea in this,” said William. “It could be all handled very conveniently without her. My statement against yours.”

Donal said nothing. William smiled again.

“You see,” said William, “the point I’m laboring to bring home to you. You happen not only to be venal, but a fool.”

“Sir!” the word shot from Donal’s lips. William waved a disinterested hand.

“Save your Dorsai rages for someone who’ll be impressed by them. I know as well as you do, you’ve no intention of attacking me. Possibly, if you were a different sort of Dorsai — but you’re not. You are, as I say, both venal and a fool. Accept these statements for the obvious facts they are; and we can get down to business.”

He looked at Donal. Donal said nothing.

“Very well, then,” went on William. “You came to me, hoping I could find you of some use. As it happens, I can. Anea is, of course, just a foolish young girl — but for her benefit, as well as my own, being her employer, we’ll have to see she doesn’t get into serious trouble. Now, she had confided in you once. She may again. If she does so — by no means discourage her. And to keep you available for such confidences,” William smiled again, quite good-humoredly, this time, “I believe I can find you a commission as Force-Leader, under Commandant Hugh Killien, when we touch down on Harmony. There is no reason why a military career shouldn’t go hand in hand with whatever other uses I can find for you.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Donal.

“Not at all—” A chime sounded over some hidden wall speaker. “Ab — phase shift in five minutes.” William picked up a small silver box from a table near his feet, and sprung it open. “Have you taken your medication, yet? Help yourself.”

He extended to Donal.

“Thank you, sir,” said Donal carefully. “I have.”

“Then,” said William, helping himself to a white tablet, and replacing the box. “I believe that is all.”

“I believe so, sir,” said Donal.

Donal inclined his head and went out. Stopping outside the stateroom door only long enough to take one of his own phase shift sedatives, he headed back toward his own stateroom. On the way, he stopped by the ship’s library to check out an information spool on the First Dissident Church, of Harmony; and this delayed him sufficiently so that he was passing down one of the long sectional corridors when the phase shift occurred.

He had been prudently asleep during those previous shifts he had gone through while outbound from Dorsai; and, of course, he had learned years ago what to expect. In addition, he was fully medicated; and the shift itself was over before it was really begun. In fact, it took place in no time, in no conceivable interval at all. Yet it had happened; and some inextinguishable recognizing part of him knew and remembered that he had been torn apart, down to the most fractional elements of his being, and spread to the wide universe and caught and collected and reassembled at some arbitrary point light-years from his destruction. And it was this memory, not the shift itself, that made him falter, for one short step, before he took up again his steady march back to his stateroom. And the memory would stay with him.

He continued on down the corridor; but he was far from having run his gauntlet for the day. As he reached the end of one section, Anea stepped out from the cross-bar corridor there that was the exact duplicate of the one, several sections down, where he first met her. Her green eyes were afire.

“You’ve been seeing him!” she snapped, barring his way.

“Seeing… oh, William,” he said.

“Don’t deny it.”

“Why should I?” Donal looked at her almost with wonder. “Surely, it’s nothing to make a secret about?”

She stared at him.

“Oh!” she cried. “You just don’t care for anything, do you? What did you do… about what I gave you?”

“I gave it back to its owner, of course,” said Donal. “There was no other sensible thing I could do.”

She turned suddenly so white that he almost reached out to catch her, certain she was about to faint. But she did no such womanish thing. Her eyes, as she stared at him, were shocked to enormity.

“Oh!” she breathed. “You… you traitor. You cheat!” and before he could make a move or say a word to stop her, she had whirled about and was running off down the corridor back in the direction from which she had come.

With a certain wry unhappiness — for, in spite of his rather low opinion of her common sense, he had really expected her to listen to his explanation — he took up his solitary walk to his stateroom. He traveled the rest of the way without meeting anyone. The corridors, in the aftermath of the phase shift were deserted by prudent passengers.

Only, passing a certain stateroom, he heard sounds of sickness from within; and, looking up, recognized the number on its door as one he had looked up just now on his recent trip to the library.

It was the stateroom of ArDell Montor; and that would be the man himself inside it now, unmedicated and racked by the passing of the phase shift, fighting his own long battle with the universe.

“All right, gentlemen,” said Hugh Killien.

He stood, confident and impressive in his chameleon battle-dress, with the fingertips of his right hand resting on the gently domed surface of the mapviewer before him.

“If you’ll gather around the viewer, here—” he said. The five Force-Leaders moved in until all six men stood thickly clustered around the meter-square area of the viewer. The illumination from the blackout shell enclosing them beat down and met the internal upward illumination of the viewer, so that Donal, glancing around at his fellow-officers, was irresistibly reminded of men caught between wrath and wrath, in some small package section of that hell their First Dissident Church Liaison-Elder had been so eloquent about, only a few hours since at the before-battle service.

“…Our position is here,” Hugh was saying. “As your commandant I make you the customary assurance that it is a perfectly tenable position and that the contemplated advance in no way violates the Mercenaries Code. Now—” he went on more briskly, “as you can see, we occupy an area five kilometers in front and three kilometers in depth, between these two ridges. Second Command of Battle Unit 176 to our right, Fourth Command of Battles to our left.

“The contemplated action calls for the Second and Fourth Commands to hold fast in full strength on both our flanks, while we move forward at sixty per cent of strength and capture a small town called Faith Will Succour, which is here—”

His index finger stabbed down and rested upon the domed image of the map.

“…At approximately four kilometers of distance from our present position. We will use three of our five Forces, Skuak’s, White’s and Graeme’s; and each Force will make its separate way to the objective. You will each have your individual maps. There are woods for the first twelve hundred meters. After that, you will have to cross the river, which is about forty meters in width, but which Intelligence assures us is fordable at the present time with a maximum depth of a hundred and twenty centimeters. On the other side it will be woods again, thinning out gradually right up to the edge of the town. We leave in twenty minutes. It’ll be dawn in an hour and I want all three Forces across that river before full daylight. Any questions?”

“What about enemy activity in the area?” asked Skuak. He was a short, stocky Cassidan, who looked Mongoloid, but was actually Eskimo in ancestry. “What kind of opposition can we expect?”