Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  We had come down to the south of a small city or camp, artificially lit, with streets running for many miles along a bay that opened into the ocean. We had named it Enemy City and assumed it was of some importance. Above us the skies were turning lurid and bright with plasma explosions as more and more ships joined the space battle. It was time we did something for the war effort. I checked out my men, then led them toward Enemy City, hoping that the other commanders shared my view that it was the obvious target.

  We set up the four plasma cannons on two ridges commanding the city, sited to pour down enfilading fire. The remaining men were dug in facing the rear, to defend the gunners if our position should be attacked. I took time to make sure that the gunners had the necessary windage corrections. Dawn was just glimmering when I stood up, lifted a white handkerchief, easily visible in the lightening gloom, and brought it down sharply.

  Golden tracks arced across the sky in a flat trajectory. By the erupting fireballs which rose upon contact we saw that we were hitting the target. For a moment we could see a dust-colored, earth-hugging city of one- and two-storied adobe buildings with a scattering of larger structures. I was reminded of photographs I had seen of Timbuktu and Omdurman on Earth. Was Enemy City a place like those? I wish I had had time to photograph it, but we blew a lot of it to bits before it fully registered on our consciousness, and then I assembled the men and marched them away at the double. I hated to give up the high ground, but I had to assume that someone would begin firing back.

  We stumbled down the hillside, charging toward Enemy City. We ran through narrow ravines that snaked toward the city gates. A hundred yards from the low, mud wall that surrounded the city we encountered our first resistance: a small rectangular guardhouse with slit windows, like some old Crusader fortress. We blew it apart with two hits from the laser cannon, and the first Khalia we saw were dead, slender chestnut-furred creatures with gun belts around their waists, from which depended a variety of pistols and swords.

  We had barely regrouped when a mob of Khalia came running toward us from the burning city. Backlit by the flames, unable to see us crouching in the ravine, they ran toward us and died, and we killed them with the plasma cannons until we ran out of cartridges, and then we killed them with stingers and cluster pistols, and at last with our bent-bladed knives, until there were no more around to kill. Not long after that we took possession of Enemy City.

  IV.

  Full daylight found me and my squad occupying a small tower in the center of the city. We had chosen a building made of heavy granite blocks, miraculously not destroyed by our bombardment. This structure, which we later learned was called Guildhall, sat by itself in the middle of a plaza, giving us an open field of fire on all sides. This was important, because we expected a counterattack to be mounted against us at any moment. So far, we had had it all our way, but we knew that couldn’t last forever. After all, we were sitting somewhere on the Khalian home planet. I just hoped that Colonel Bar Kochba had arranged for a second wave to be sent in. I expected all hell to break loose any minute.

  The light on our field radio started flashing soon after noon, signaling the end of radio silence. It was Colonel Bar Kochba, and he asked me to report my squad’s situation.

  “We’ve taken over a city,” I told him. “Not much resistance. No casualties. But I don’t know what happens next. We’re sitting right in the middle of this place and expecting to get attacked any time.”

  “You can relax a little,” Bar Kochba said. “We have visual and radar surveillance over your entire sector. There are no Khalian troop concentrations in sight.”

  “What about the other squads?” I asked him.

  “They’ve all reached their objectives. We had some losses when Teams 4 and 7 hit the spaceport. Only four men. So far we’re coming out of this miraculously well.”

  “What about the spaceport?”

  “We destroyed it.”

  “And the battle in space?”

  “A very big victory for the Fleet. The Khalia seemed to have no general battle plan. Just a mass of ships attacking on an individual basis. The Fleet knocked down a lot of them. The rest went into FTL drive and got away.”

  I needed a moment to digest all this. “Then we’ve won!” I cried.

  “Yes, obviously,” Bar Kochba said. He didn’t sound too excited about it. “I guess we could call it winning.”

  “I don’t understand your reservations over this,” I told him. “We’ve mauled their fleet and captured their home planet. Doesn’t that mean that the war is over?”

  “My dear ben Judah,” Bar Kochba said, “I guess I must bring you up to date on the latest findings. Preliminary reports show that the planet Target is or was an important staging area for the Khalian raider ships. We have won an important victory. But this planet Target seems not to be the Khalian home planet.”

  One of the members of my squad had come into the room I was using for radio transmission. He was making gestures and pointing outside. I made a gesture at him that was meant to mean, wait a minute, can’t you see I’m talking on the radio?

  “If this isn’t the Khalian home planet,” I said, “then who does it belong to?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Bar Kochba said. “You’re the Intelligence Officer. Find out.”

  “All right,” I said, “What about the Khalia?”

  “You’ll have to be on your guard at all times. Preliminary reports indicate there are at least a few thousand of them left on the planet.”

  “Right, sir. We’ll be careful. How much longer will we be down here?”

  “Quite a while,” Bar Kochba said, with what might have been a dry chuckle. “Our Battle Group has done so well that the Fleet Command has assigned us to garrison duty here.”

  Bar Kochba signed off. At last I was able to give my attention to my gesticulating squadman.

  “What is it, Gideon?”

  “Some people outside are demanding to see you at once.”

  “People? Do you mean human people, or Khalian people?”

  “Neither, Judah. These are what, I guess are the indigenous people who live on this planet.”

  “Good,” I said. “About time we found out who this planet belongs to. I’ll see them at once.”

  Gideon nodded. Our armed forces are very casual. “I’ll show them in.” He had a curious expression on his face. Almost like he was laughing about something. I couldn’t figure it out until a few minutes later, when he led the delegation in to the room.

  I suppose that “people” can refer to anything that can carry on an intelligent conversation. We sometimes call the Khalians “people,” and they resemble four-foot weasels. So perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when Gideon ushered in four bipeds of approximately six feet in height, dressed in long robes which concealed the greater part of their bodies. What I could see of their bodies, however, were scaled and feathered. Their feet were claw-like, and their small heads, at the end of skinny scrawny necks were the small heads of birds.

  V.

  Thus I met my first Nedge, as they called themselves, the nomadic bird-people of Target. And while other humans turned to the major question of the day, the question of where the Khalian home planet was, since it wasn’t here, I turned to rounding up the remaining Khalia on Target, gathering intelligence, and arbitrating the I differences that come up between our troops and the Nedge.

  My first meeting did not have too auspicious a beginning. I welcomed the four Nedge, had chairs brought for them, offered them refreshments. I was trying to begin on the right note, because I knew we would need their cooperation to help us find, capture, or kill the remaining Khalia.

  But my words, intended to put them at ease, seemed to, give them problems. They conferred hastily among themselves, gabbling and clucking and shaking their wattles. Finally they reached some sort of decision, and the eldest among them, whom I later came to know as Kingfisher, since his Nedgean name was unpronounceable, stepped forward, flapped his
rudimentary wings twice, cleared his throat, and spoke in quite passable English, though marked, inevitably, with a broad avian accent.

  “You do us much honor,” Kingfisher said, “but that’s your problem. If you wish us to sit, we’ll sit. Just remember, we didn’t propose anything of the sort ourselves.”

  I had Gideon fetch some of the folding canvas chairs that had been sent down with our supplies from the Fleet. The Nedge tried to imitate the way I sat, but it soon became obvious that their bones weren’t jointed like ours. Still, they managed finally, at cost of putting their feathers into considerable disarray, and Kingfisher said, “Am I correct in assuming that this is a form of abasement or does the posture have some other meaning?”

  “It has nothing to do with abasement,” I told him. “I am honoring you as my friends and guests.”

  “This is how you treat a friend?” Kingfisher said. “I’d hate to see what you make an enemy do.”

  “Where I come from,” I told him, “sitting signifies a meeting of equals. But suit yourself, stand up if you want.”

  “No, no,” Kingfisher said. “We are honored that you consider us your equals. Sitting is grotesque and uncomfortable, but what does that matter when you consider the honor it conveys?” He translated. this for the others, who gobbled their appreciation.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, “let me start off by telling you how happy I was to be able to rid you and your people of the oppressive rule of the Khalia.”

  “Is that what you call them?” Kingfisher” said. “Panya, that’s what we call them. We also call them ‘the dwarf people with too many teeth.’ There are other names. Yes, we meant to thank you for that. Of course, the Khalia aren’t really gone, you know.”

  “We’ll soon take care of that,” I told him. “We will expect your cooperation, of course.”

  “I cannot speak for the rest of my Guild,” Kingfisher said. “For myself, I can assure you, you will get the full honors suitable to your rank.”

  Kingfisher was a high official of the Tinker’s Guild. The others represented, variously, the Nest-Builder’s Guild, the Seaweed Purveyor’s Guild, and the Interior Decorator’s Guild.

  These were by no means all of the guilds of the Nedge.

  This intelligent avian race had divided itself into more than three hundred functions or duties, each of them the prerogative of a guild. Even murder was represented in the form of the Assassin’s Guild, known poetically as the Guild Without a Nest.

  Their planet, poor in minerals and deficient in croplands, had been little disturbed by the various waves of traders and raiders that had become manifest over the last thousand years or so. The Khalia had come across the Nedge only about fifty years ago, had found their planet a good staging ground for their space fleets, and had taken over the political power from the guilds. Before the arrival of the Khalia, the Nedge had been ruled by a council made up of the leading members of all the Guilds. This council decided matters requiring arbitration between the guilds. The Khalia had left this structure intact, but had placed themselves at the head of it. Until our arrival, all the larger questions had been decided by a Khalian overlord, and the Nedge had greatly resented this.

  Now I told them, as tactfully as I was able, that we, the representatives of the Fleet, were the ones who had to be obeyed. They didn’t like this, of course, but it had to be said.

  Kingfisher and the others held a hurried conference. They gobbled and chittered with each other, in that bad-tempered, exasperated way some birds have. At last they seemed to agree about something, and Kingfisher turned to me.

  “We agree that you Fleetmen have the power. We Nedge will not act against you.”

  It was a weak sort of statement, and not entirely satisfactory. But I had to be content with it. I radioed Bar Kochba later in the day, reporting on the conversation.

  “The other commanders have reported much the same thing,” Bar Kochba said. “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble from the Nedge. I’m getting reinforcements sent down. It should take us no more than a week or two to kill or capture the remaining Khalia.”

  Ben Kochba Was a little hasty in saying that, and I do his reputation for sagacity no good by quoting him. A month later we were still mopping up the Khalia. A month after that—so unexpected are the fortunes of war—we found ourselves on the defensive.

  VI.

  People get the wrong idea when they refer to the Khalia as weasels. Yes, the resemblance is there, the long, supple body, lustrous fur, pointed snout. But there is something ludicrous about the idea of a weasel four or five feet tall. And the Khalia were not ludicrous. In their style of attack, they were more reminiscent of wolverines, pound for pound perhaps the fiercest fighter in the animal kingdom.

  The Khalia had great powers of concealment and a sure instinct for camouflage. On the attack they had a talent for instant acceleration. Individually, they loved to do the unexpected. A Khalian brave might come at you in great bounds, or he might slither toward you like an impossibly agile snake. Tactically, it was impossible to predict what they would do next.

  They soon gave up any attempt at fighting in formation. It was a style that didn’t suit them. They were individualists, as I was to learn, with a taste for fighting that reminded me of stories of the ancient Norse berserkers. Their skill with handguns and edged weapons was uncanny. It took a trained swordman among humans to be a match for a Khalian brave with his wavy-edged swords and his foot-knives. They would come boiling up almost at our feet while we were on patrol, or dart at us from alleyways in the cities of the Nedge. Their aim was to inflict casualties. They gave us much more trouble than we bargained for. They gave us so much trouble that the occupation of Target became a matter of concern to the officers of the Fleet, who dreaded having to send the casualty lists back to the home planets of the deceased. Almost a dozen levies were involved in the occupation of Target. Unless matters could be turned around rather dramatically, there was a real problem of a collapse on the part of the Alliance ground troops.

  We were hampered in dealing with the enemy by our concern for the indigenous population. They were not our enemies. But they were not our friends, either, and somehow the Khalia were able to move among them, were often concealed by them. The Nedge didn’t like the Khalia, but they didn’t turn them in, either. I learned the reason for this later.

  It was a merciless war, in the cities and villages, in the countryside. The strain on our forces was so great that there was a danger Fleet Command would withdraw us, because our casualties had grown alarming, if not to us, then certainly to the constituencies on our home planets. And it is the peoples of our home planets, after all, who vote the funds that keep the Fleet in operation. If the constituency thinks an operation is being bungled, politicians distance themselves from it. They may disregard strategic interests and give up too soon, hoping to achieve, easy, bloodless victories in a different sector.

  Unfortunately, wars are not necessarily won by those who lose the least men. Some of the greatest victories of past wars have been won by the army that stayed in the field longest, that kept on going, stayed cohesive longer than the other, in spite of perhaps equal casualties. And wars have been lost by the timid—their prototype being those Carthaginian merchants who hesitated too long to supply Hannibal in Italy, who wanted easy “strategic” victories.

  It’s a difficult problem because simple pugnacity and stubbornness isn’t enough. You have to be the judge of when to move back, when to stick it out at all costs. It calls for a nice genius, knowing when to dodge and run, like Fabius Cunctator, and when to pound home the attack at all costs, like his successor, Scipio Africanus, at the walls of Carthage. These two great generals, both of whom saved Rome, did so one by retreating without a blush when that was the thing to do, the other pressing relentlessly for final victory when that-was the thing to do.

  We on the front line that was everywhere on the planet and nowhere felt that there was something important to be won here. You could tell it
in the desperation with which the Khalia fought us. There was nothing specific we could point to, nothing for the computers to quantify, but despite that you can’t discount the gut feeling that something important is going on, something which may take a little while to clarify, but will prove more than worth the effort. And we also felt that it was a test of wills, and that the final victory would be determined by who put forth the greater effort in imposing his will.

  It has never been revealed just how badly the tide ran against us. We managed to hang on, concealing our losses from Earth, lying about our victories. It was as though we could see acted out, here in this single planet, issues which affected the rise and fall of whole species, factors of determination and will which determined which race would live and which would die.

  In the end, the decisions of the bird people’s guilds were crucial. They were frankly in doubt as to whether to exchange rule by the Khalia for rule by us. Because that’s what it came down to. We tried with a straight face to promise them freedom, but finally we couldn’t do it. We had to tell them the truth, because we couldn’t help giving ourselves away when we tried to lie. We of the Alliance were going to take over Target, at least for the immediate future. The planet was important to us. Because the Khalia had been here for many years, there was a lot we could learn about them here. And, also, this planet was the last known assembly place for the Khalian raiders. It was from here that we expected to pick up the clues that would lead us to their real home, the planet where the power came from, the head of the snake, so to speak, so that we could finally cut it off. But to do that we had to solve the riddle of the Khalia on Target. And it was a bird-man, at last, who provided the key.

  VII.

  It was two months after our landing on Target that I met the young Nedge named Tsk Otaî, and whom I nicknamed Woodpecker. He was taller than most of his people, with a red crest on his head that stood up when he became excited. He was a Master in the Tinker’s Guild. I knew that this was a considerable accomplishment for one so young, and I congratulated him on his rank.