War To The Knife

by Grant, Peter

  “There are three reasons for that. One is basic security, of course – we don’t know who we can trust off-planet. The second is that… shall we say, a certain firmness may be needed to persuade the ship’s captain and crew to take it out of the Laredo system once it’s aboard. There’ll be all sorts of consternation and monkeyhouse going on, both planetside during and after our attack, and in orbit after the attack you’ll have to mount on the defenses there in order to open a window of opportunity for the ship to escape. Its crew may believe they’d run less risk by handing over the evidence and anyone accompanying it to the Bactrians, in the hope that they’ll then be allowed to proceed. They won’t be accustomed to the Bactrians’ methods, after all, nor to their SS torturers. The third aspect is that while our evidence is very comprehensive, essentially it’s things – objects, data, recordings and what have you. It’ll be far more convincing if it’s accompanied by eyewitnesses who can recount – if necessary under truth-tester examination – their own experiences of the Bactrian invasion, what they themselves saw and heard and went through. They’ll back up the evidence and turn it into something living, something real, for those who read or see it.”

  “I guess there’s a fourth aspect too, Sir,” Jake interjected thoughtfully. “If whoever gets the evidence and Mr. Ellis aboard his ship tries to return planetside, that’ll no longer be possible. By then most of us will be dead in the ruins of Banka, along with the Satrap and an ungodly number of Bactrians – at least, we hope so. I don’t know where the orbital force would go, or how they’d get there. In the turmoil they’d probably be shot out of the sky before they could even land.”

  “A very good point,” the General agreed. “Over to you, Gloria.”

  “Thank you, Bill.” She turned to Dave. “There’s another reason for what we’re asking of you, Captain, but before I go into it, we need to know where you stand. We can’t in good conscience order you to do this if you feel it’s your duty to die with your father. Therefore, we’re asking you to volunteer, and we’ll make the same request of everyone else that put down their names for the orbital mission. Only those who accept the burden of survival – and it will be a burden, trust me on this – will be accepted for the mission. The rest will be reassigned to join the assault on Banka.”

  Dave was silent, his mental struggle written plainly on his face. Jake watched him quietly for a while, then said softly, “Son, I’d like you to accept this assignment.” He held up a hand to stifle his son’s instinctive half-cry of protest. “It’s absolutely vital. Unless the orbital defenses are suppressed, the evidence is delivered to the spaceship, and it gets safely away from the system, there’ll never be a United Planets inquiry into what Bactria did here, and it’ll never face punishment for its invasion of Laredo. Whoever commands this mission will face huge difficulties. Unless it’s done right first time, all those who died over the past three years will have wasted their lives, and those of us who are about to die will do so in vain. I can’t think of anyone I’d trust more than you to succeed, no matter what the odds.

  “As for me…” He shrugged. “I’m sure to be killed in due course, whether in this assault or later. I’d rather not have to watch you die as well. Jeanette, Timmy, Janet and I will live on through you and your kids, on some planet I may never have heard of and will never see. It’s not just me, either. All of us will live on through all of you. You’ll honor our memories, tell our stories to your children, and explain to others why we fought so hard for so long. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d like to be remembered in that way.” Bill and Gloria murmured their agreement.

  The lump in Dave’s throat was so large and painful he couldn’t speak. He looked at his father for a long moment, then gave a slow, reluctant nod.

  “Thank you, Captain,” General Allred said formally, his voice husky. “I know you don’t want to do this, and I honor your willingness to put your planet’s needs ahead of your loyalty to your father.” He rose to his feet. “I’ll leave you to discuss a related issue with my wife. Your father and I will begin planning a number of the operations that will be integral to this whole affair. When you finish with Gloria, see me and we’ll put the question of survival to your team – but we’ll swear them to secrecy first, and we won’t tell them everything yet. If word should leak to the Bactrians about our plans, they’ll make it flat-out impossible for us to succeed.”

  “I understand. Thank you, Sir.”

  He stood at attention as the General and his father left the room. As they closed the door behind them, Gloria refilled her glass with water and drained half of it. She brushed back a curl of hair from her forehead, her eyes drawn and weary.

  Dave took his glass, walked up the table and sat down nearer her. For a moment her face was outlined against the light from a wall fitting behind her. It looked gaunt, almost skull-like, and he suddenly realized how much she’d changed. At the beginning of the war she’d had a well-rounded, roly-poly figure with a face to match. Now she was almost stick-like, her frame showing the enormous strain of three years and more of watching friends and comrades – not to mention her own son and daughter – die all around her. He’d seen the same thing in his father and the rest of Niven’s Regiment, including Tamsin and himself; but since all of them had gone through the process together and they’d all deteriorated at the same rate, it hadn’t really struck him until now how much they’d all been ground down by the war.

  He broke the awkward silence. “What did you want to discuss, Ma’am?” His voice was still husky with emotion.

  “Oh, forget the formalities! We’re preparing for our last stand. I hardly think it matters any more who has what rank. Death won’t play favorites with us, or go by seniority.”

  He couldn’t help laughing. “True enough. All right, Gloria.” He placed subtle emphasis on her name. “What’s up?”

  “Thank you… Dave. Do you know how I ended up in my present position?”

  “No, I can’t say I do.”

  “I was a psychiatrist. I did my basic medical degree here, then went off-planet to specialize. I came back to set up in private practice. In due course I was authorized by Congress to serve as acting, unpaid, voluntary Deputy Minister of Health for mental health issues. When the Bactrians invaded most of the Cabinet was killed in the initial series of strikes. Through a long series of events – not least of which was simply surviving! – I ended up as Minister of Health in President Wexler’s underground Cabinet. In due course I found myself its only surviving Minister. As such, the Council of the Resistance co-opted me as its Chairperson after the President died in captivity.

  “That may help you to understand why mental health has been my particular focus for years, both before and during this war. I’m very aware of how we’ve all been mentally and emotionally scarred by this war.” She saw his quick frown and hastened to add, “I’m not saying we’re mentally unstable. We’ve had to be stable in order to survive, but stability is different in time of war than in time of peace. We’ve had to abandon anything and everything that got in the way of staying alive. If you think about it, you’ll realize that’s why you and your comrades have survived this long. You’ve learned to put aside every distraction and focus on killing the enemy before he killed you. Those who didn’t learn that lesson are mostly no longer with us.”

  Dave said slowly, “I daresay you’re partly right, but luck’s important too. Sometimes it works in your favor, sometimes it doesn’t.”

  “You’re right; but even given good luck, those who didn’t adapt very quickly to this new life of war were usually the first to die. Those who’ve survived this long, despite all the Bactrians could do to them, are those who’ve adjusted most completely to its demands.”

  He sipped from his glass of water. “All right, I’ll concede that. So?”

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you how much that’s warped and twisted our thought processes? Let me give you an example from just a few moments ago. You’ve just been offered a chance t
o live. Instead of jumping at it, you were upset by it. You didn’t want to leave your father to die alone. You had to be persuaded that living was more important to our cause than dying. I understand where you’re coming from, and I truly admire your dedication; but to someone outside this environment, your attitude would be so incomprehensible as to seem deranged. She’d wonder why anyone would choose to die when they have a chance to live. Does that illustrate how drastically your outlook on life has been changed by this war? Would you have reacted that way before it broke out?”

  “No, I wouldn’t; and yes, I suppose it does show how I’ve changed. I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective.”

  “Thank you.” Her shoulders sagged as she relaxed and took a deep breath. “Having said that, I think you’ll understand better what I’m about to ask of you. It was because I’m a psychiatrist that I began our ‘Witness to War’ program almost three years ago. I patterned it after a famous example in history. Did you ever hear of something called the ‘Holocaust’?”

  “Wasn’t that the extermination of a race during the Second Global War on Old Home Earth, the best part of a millennium ago?”

  “Not quite their extermination, and it was a religious rather than a racial group, but yes, that’s it. Many of those who lived through it never spoke about it. Their memories later died with them. A few decades after the Holocaust some people tried to persuade the remaining survivors to record their memories. It developed into an international project, and its records have long been a treasure-trove for psychologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists and cultural analysts. They’re one of the few really in-depth records of genocide from its victims’ point of view, even though most were recorded decades after the event, when memories had faded and been modified by later experiences.

  “That’s exactly what Bactria’s tried to do on Laredo – commit genocide, exterminate us. We’ve suffered proportionately even greater losses than the victims of the Holocaust. About eighty per cent of our original planetary population is dead, missing or enslaved, and frankly I don’t hold out much hope for the rest of us in the long term. I realized early on that we were in an almost unique historical position. I wanted to preserve as much of our collective memory of genocide as I could.”

  “Why?” Dave asked bluntly. “What good will it do?”

  “It won’t help us survive, either as a people or as individuals, but it’ll ensure that we’re remembered. That counts for something, I think. Even more important, it’ll help psychiatrists – don’t forget my professional interest – to understand more about what this experience does to people, and how to help the survivors of anything similar in future.”

  He considered her words. “I… suppose that makes sense,” he said slowly, thoughtfully.

  “I’m glad you agree. I started three years ago by sending hand-picked representatives among the survivors of battles, massacres and incidents, asking them to record their experiences. I trained them to ask leading questions, drawing out details that otherwise might have been glossed over. I tried to get them into combat units, but at first you were all too busy. Only after we switched from open conflict to guerrilla warfare did our troops pull back into rear areas and begin setting up secure bases like this one. That gave my people a chance to talk to some of you. Did you ever do so?”

  “No. One of them asked me about it, but I was far too busy. Don’t forget, I was a part-time reservist Corporal when the war started. I got three promotions in six weeks: first to Sergeant, then a battlefield commission as Second Lieutenant, then three weeks later promotion to First Lieutenant and Commanding Officer of what was left of Charlie Company at the Battle of the Crossing. I had to learn all my new responsibilities ‘on the fly’, as it were. I was so busy organizing the remnants of my company and helping to establish secure bases that I didn’t have time to breathe, let alone reminisce about the fighting. By the time we’d settled down, I didn’t want to.”

  “I can understand that,” she acknowledged with a sigh. “Be that as it may, we’ve accumulated upwards of ten thousand hours of vid and audio recordings of what happened to us, individually and collectively. They’re unique in that they were gathered soon after the events in question. They were fresh in the memories of those who spoke to us. We also have sensor recordings of battles, firefights, ambushes; you name it, including the deliberate destruction of Banka and everyone in it. There were numerous security cameras operating in and around the city, and we tried to retrieve as many of their recordings as possible. Some are ghastly to watch, but they’re the last monument to those who died there. That gives them a meaning far beyond mere ghoulish voyeurism, I think.

  “Taken as a whole, we have an archive of atrocity and genocide and their effects on the human psyche that may rival the records of the Holocaust. Even more important, it’s contemporary, not ancient history. I desperately want to get it into the hands of those who can use it to help others like us in future. It’ll be part of the records we send off-planet with you. I need you to do your utmost to get it to my alma mater, where I qualified in psychiatry – the Faculty of Medicine at Commonwealth University on Lancaster.”

  “Why them?”

  “Because they helped develop the debriefing program used by the Lancastrian Commonwealth Fleet to help its combat veterans adjust to civilian life. It’s widely regarded as the best in the settled galaxy. The people at CU understand combat fatigue and related issues very well. They’re probably in a better position to understand and make the best use of these recordings from a psychiatric perspective than almost anyone else.”

  “But will they make the best use of it? Why should they? What’s their motivation, apart from publishing a few papers to score academic points off other universities?”

  She laughed shakily. “You don’t have a very high opinion of academics, do you?”

  “Saving your presence, no – but then you’re more practical than you are academic.”

  “Thanks for saying that. No, the right people will understand how vital these recordings are to genuine psychiatric research, not to mention a host of other disciplines. I might add that by getting them to CU, you’ll also help yourself and your soldiers.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “All of you will have to work through the years of warfare and tension. Remember I said that survival would be a burden? I wasn’t joking. The burden will be readjusting to normal life after all you’ve been through. Throughout history, veterans with the amount of combat experience that you’ve all accumulated have found it difficult. You’ll find it even more so, because everything you knew before the war – and almost everyone – won’t be there anymore. You’ll have to start afresh in completely new and unfamiliar surroundings.”

  “I… I guess that makes sense,” he said slowly, thoughtfully.

  “It does. Something like the Commonwealth Fleet’s program for combat veterans will be exactly what you all need. You’re not members of the Fleet, so you won’t be eligible to participate in it: but the program was developed at CU, so they know it well. I’ll ask the Vice-President to make funds available to hire professionals to help you, and the people at CU can put you in touch with the very best. The material we send with you, and your own needs, will effectively form two halves of the same coin. You’ll be a treasure trove to CU’s psychiatrists. They won’t only be able to help you; they’ll take what they learn from you, link it to our material, and use it to help others in future.

  “There’s one last thing. I hope you and your soldiers will add your own memories to our archive; then I want you to use it, and your own experiences, and funds that I’ll ask the Vice-President to provide, to tell Laredo’s story to a general audience, not just to diplomats and politicians and mental health specialists. I think a very powerful documentary can be produced from the recordings, and probably a book as well – perhaps more than one of each. They’ll ensure that we’ll be remembered as human beings, not just as abstract academic subjects. You’ll be the only
people who can give that gift to the rest of us. Too much history is never recorded, and if it is it’s never disseminated. I don’t want us, or this planet, to be forgotten like that.”

  He said reluctantly, “I don’t want to be a guinea-pig for academics, but you make a strong case. I can’t promise anything unless and until we get away from Laredo. If we do, and if the Vice-President agrees to use your material in that way, and if she gives us permission to do as you’ve asked, and if she makes funds available for it, I’ll ask my people to do all they can to help.”

  She grimaced. “That’s an awful lot of conditions. Still, I suppose that’s all I can rightfully ask or expect of you right now. Just do your best… please? It’s really, really important to me. In a way I suppose it’s a personal legacy from me to my profession – perhaps the last contribution I’ll ever be able to make to it. If I’m going to die soon, I’d like something I’ve done to outlive me. My children won’t, after all. They’re already dead.”

  He studied her for a long moment. “Did your husband know what you were going to ask me to do?”

  “Yes. I didn’t think it would be fair to place this additional burden on your shoulders without his approval. He said I could ask you to help, but not order you.”

  “That sounds like something he’d say,” Dave agreed as he stood up. “All right, Gloria. It is a burden, but I guess it’s also a privilege to be asked to do something like this. If I’m spared I’ll do my best for you, and I’ll ask my people to do the same. You’ve got my word on it.”

  ~ ~ ~

  As the other members of the orbital team followed General Allred out of the side cavern, Tamsin held back, motioning to Dave to do the same. She looked stunned, confused and conflicted.

  “What is it, love?” he asked.

  She shook her head mutely and came into his arms, holding him tightly. He could feel her body trembling against his. At last she murmured, “I… I just can’t make myself believe this. To be told we might have a chance at life after all, when we’d already made up our minds to die together… it’s just too much!”