Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire

by Jerry Pournelle

  "You've come here for a purpose—see that it is achieved . . . The trier who fails is a far better man than the failure who has not tried . . . We hate to send a man down, but will not hesitate if he lets the college down . . . Get it fixed firmly in your minds that space-navy leadership is not a pleasant game; it is a tough, responsible job and you're here to learn it."

  In that strain he carried on, a speech evidently made many times before to many previous intakes. It included plenty of gunk about keep right on to the end of the road, what shall we do with a drunken sailor, the honor of the Space Service, the prestige of the College, the lights in the sky are stars, glory, glory, hallelujah, and so forth.

  After an hour of this he finished with, "Technical knowledge is essential. Don't make the mistake of thinking it enough to get top marks in technical examinations. Officers are required to handle men as well as instruments and machines. We have our own way of checking on your fitness in that respect." He paused, said, "That is all from me, gentlemen. You will now proceed in orderly manner to the main lecture room where Captain Saunders will deal with you."

  Captain Saunders proved to be a powerfully built individual with a leathery face, a flattened nose, and an artificial left hand permanently hidden in a glove. He studied the forty newcomers as though weighing them against their predecessors, emitted a noncommittal grunt.

  He devoted himself an hour to saying most of the things Mercer had said, but in blunter manner. Then, "I'll take you on a tour to familiarize you with the layout. You'll be given a book of rules, regulations and conventions; if you don't read them and observe them, you've only yourselves to blame. Tuition proper will commence at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. Parade in working dress immediately outside your house. Any questions?"

  Nobody ventured to put any questions. Saunders led them forth on the tour which occupied the rest of the day. Conscious of their newness and junior status, they absorbed various items of information in complete silence, grinned apologetically at some six hundred second-, third-and fourth-year men hard at work in laboratories and lecture rooms.

  Receiving their books of rules and regulations, they attended the evening meal, returned to Mercer's House. By this time McShane had formed a tentative friendship with two fellow sufferers named Simcox and Fane.

  "It says here," announced Simcox, mooching along the corridor with his book open in his hands, "that we are confined to college for the first month, after which we are permitted to go to town three evenings per week."

  "That means we start off with one month's imprisonment," growled Fane. "Just at the very time when we need a splurge to break the ice."

  McShane lowered his voice to a whisper. "You two come to my room. At least we can have a good gab and a few gripes. I've a full bottle of whiskey in the cupboard."

  "It's a deal," enthused Fane, his face brightening.

  They slipped into Room 20, unobserved by other students. Simcox rubbed his hands together and Fane licked anticipatory lips while McShane went to the cupboard.

  "What're we going to use for glasses?" asked Fane, staring around.

  "What're we going to use for whiskey?" retorted McShane, straightening up and backing away from the cupboard. He looked at them, his face thunderous. "It's not here."

  "Maybe you moved it and forgot," suggested Simcox. "Or perhaps your man has stashed it some place where Mercer can't see it."

  "Why should he?" demanded Fane, waving his book of rules. "It says nothing about bottles being forbidden."

  "I'd better search the place before I blow my top," said McShane, still grim. He did just that and did it thoroughly. "It's gone. Some dirty scut swiped it."

  "That means we've a thief in the house," commented Simcox unhappily. "The staff ought to be told."

  Fane consulted his book again. "According to this, complaints and requests must be taken to the House Proctor, a fourth-year man residing in Room 1."

  "All right, watch me dump this in his lap." McShane bolted out, down the stairs, hammered on the door of Room 1. "Come in."

  He entered. The proctor, a tall, dark-haired fellow in the mid-twenties, was reclining in a chair, legs crossed, a heavy book before him. His dark eyes coldly viewed the visitor.

  "Your name?"

  "Warner McShane."

  "Mr. McShane, you will go outside, close the door, knock in a way that credits me with normal hearing, and re-enter in proper manner."

  McShane went red. "I regret to say I am not aware of what you consider the proper manner."

  "You will march in at regulation pace, halt smartly, and stand at attention while addressing me."

  Going out, McShane did exactly as instructed, blank-faced but inwardly seething. He halted, hands stiffly at sides, shoulders squared.

  "That's better," said the proctor. His gaze was shrewd as he surveyed the other. "Possibly you think I got malicious satisfaction out of that?"

  No reply.

  "If so, you're wrong. You're learning exactly as I learned—the hard way. An officer must command obedience by example as well as by authority. He must be willing to give to have the right to receive." Another pause inviting comment that did not come. "Well, what's your trouble?"

  "A bottle of whiskey has been stolen from my room."

  "How do you know that it was stolen?"

  "It was there this morning. It isn't there now. Whoever took it did so without my knowledge and permission. That is theft."

  "Not necessarily. Your man may have removed it."

  "It's still theft."

  "Very well. It will be treated as such if you insist." His bearing lent peculiar significance to his final question. "Do you insist?"

  McShane's mind whirled around at a superfast pace. The darned place was a trap. The entire college was carpeted with traps. This very question was a trap. Evade it! Get out of it while the going is good!

  "If you don't mind, I'll first ask my man whether he took it and why."

  The change in the proctor was remarkable. He beamed at the other as he said, "I am very glad to hear you say that."

  McShane departed with the weird but gratifying feeling that in some inexplicable way he had gained a small victory, a positive mark on his record-sheet that might cancel out an unwittingly-earned negative mark. Going upstairs, he reached his door, bawled down the corridor, "Billings! Billings!" then went into his room.

  Two minutes passed before Billings appeared. "You called me, sir?"

  "Yes, I did. I had a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard. It has disappeared. Do you know anything about it?"

  "Yes, sir. I removed it myself."

  "Removed it?" McShane threw Simcox and Fane a look of half-suppressed exasperation. "What on earth for?"

  "I have obtained your first issue of technical books and placed them on the rack in readiness, sir. It would be advisable to commence your studies at once, if I may say so."

  "Why the rush?"

  "The examination at the end of the first month is designed to check on the qualifications that new entrants are alleged to possess. Occasionally they prove not to the complete satisfaction of the college. In such a case, the person concerned is sent home as unsuitable." The old eye acquired a touch of desperation. "You will have to pass, sir. It is extremely important. You will pardon me for saying that an officer can manage without drink when it is expedient to do so."

  Taking a deep breath, McShane asked, "Exactly what have you done with the bottle?"

  "I have concealed it, sir, in a place reserved by the staff for that purpose."

  "And don't I ever get it back?"

  Billings was shocked. "Please understand, sir, that the whiskey has been removed and not confiscated. I will be most happy to return it in time for you to celebrate your success in the examination."

  "Get out of my sight," said McShane.

  "Very well, sir."

  When he had gone, McShane told the others, "See what I've got? It's worse than living with a maiden aunt."

  "Mine's no better
," said Fane gloomily.

  "Mine neither," endorsed Simcox.

  "Well, what are we going to do about it, if anything?" McShane invited.

  They thought it over and after a while Simcox said, "I'm taking the line of least resistance." He raised his tone to passable imitation of a childish treble. "I am going to go home and do my sums because my Nanny will think I'm naughty if I don't."

  "Me, too," Fane decided. "An officer and a gentleman, sir, never blows his nose with a ferocious blast. Sometimes the specimen I've got scares hell out of me. One spit on the floor and you're expelled with ignominy."

  They ambled out, moody-faced. McShane flung himself into a chair, spent twenty minutes scowling at the wall. Then, becoming bored with that, he reached for the top book in the stack. It was thrillingly titled "Astromathematical Foundations of Space Navigation." It looked ten times drier than a bone. For lack of anything else to do, he stayed with it. He became engrossed despite himself. He was still with it at midnight, mentally bulleting through the star-whorls and faraway mists of light.

  Billings tapped on the door-panels, looked in, murmured apologetically, "I realized that you are not yet in bed, sir, and wondered whether you had failed to notice the time. It is twelve o'clock. If I may make so bold—"

  He ducked out fast as McShane hurled the book at him.

  Question Eleven: The motto of the Space Training College is "God Bless You." As briefly as possible explain its origin and purpose.

  McShane scribbled rapidly. "The motto is based upon three incontrovertible points. Firstly, a theory need not be correct or even visibly sensible; it is sufficient for it to be workable. Secondly, any life form definable as intelligent must have imagination and curiosity. Thirdly, any life form possessed of imagination and curiosity cannot help but speculate about prime causes."

  He sharpened his thoughts a bit, went on, "Four hundred years ago a certain Captain Anderson, taking a brief vacation on Earth, stopped to listen to a religious orator who was being heckled by several members of the audience. He noticed that the orator answered every witticism and insult with the words, 'God bless you, brother!' and that the critics lacked an effective reply. He also noted that in a short time the interrupters gave up their efforts one by one, eventually leaving the orator to continue unhampered."

  What next? He chewed his pen, then, "Captain Anderson, an eccentric but shrewd character, was sufficiently impressed to try the same tactic on alien races encountered in the cosmos. He found that it worked nine times out of ten. Since then it has been generally adopted as a condensed, easily employed and easily understood form of space-diplomacy."

  He looked it over. Seemed all right but not quite enough. The question insisted upon brevity but it had to be answered in full, if at all. "The tactic has not resolved all differences or averted all space wars but it is workable in that it has reduced both to about ten per cent of the potential number. The words 'God bless you' are neither voiced nor interpreted in conventional Earth-terms. From the cosmic viewpoint they may be said to mean, 'May the prime cause of everything be beneficial to you!' "

  Yes, that looked all right. He read it right through, felt satisfied, was about to pass on to the next question when a tiny bubble of suspicion lurking deep in his subconscious suddenly rose to the surface and burst with a mentally hearable pop.

  The preceding ten questions and the following ones all inquired about subjects on which he was supposed to be informed. Question Eleven did not. Nobody at any time had seen fit to explain the college motto. The examiners had no right to assume that any examinee could answer it. So why had they asked it? It now became obvious—they were still trapping.

  Impelled by curiosity he, McShane, had looked up the answer in the college library, this Holy Joe aspect of space travel being too much to let pass unsolved. But for that he'd have been stuck.

  The implication was that anyone unable to deal with Question Eleven would be recognized as lacking in curiosity and disinterested. Or, if interested, too lazy and devoid of initiative to do anything about it.

  He glanced surreptitiously around the room in which forty bothered figures were seated at forty widely separated desks. About a dozen examinees were writing or pretending to do so. One was busily training his left ear to droop to shoulder level. Four were masticating their digits. Most of the others were feeling around their own skulls as if seeking confirmation of the presence or absence of brains.

  The discovery of one trap slowed him up considerably. He reconsidered all the questions already answered, treating each one as a potential pitfall. The unanswered questions got the same treatment.

  Number Thirty-four looked mighty suspicious. It was planted amid a series of technical queries from which it stuck out like a Sirian's prehensile nose. It was much too artless for comfort. All it said was: In not more than six words define courage.

  Well, for better or for worse, here goes. "Courage is fear faced with resolution."

  He wiped off the fiftieth question with vast relief, handed in his papers, left the room, wandered thoughtfully around the campus.

  Simcox joined him in short time, asked, "How did it go with you?"

  "Could have been worse."

  "Yes, that's how I felt about it. If you don't hit the minimum of seventy-five per cent, you're out on your neck. I think I've made it all right."

  They waited until Fane arrived. He came half an hour later and wore the sad expression of a frustrated spaniel.

  "I got jammed on four stinkers. Every time there's an exam I go loaded with knowledge that evaporates the moment I sit down."

  Two days afterward the results went up on the board. McShane muscled through the crowd and took a look.

  McShane, Warner. 91%. Pass with credit.

  He sprinted headlong for Mercer's House, reached his room with Simcox and Fane panting at his heels.

  "Billings! Hey, Billings!"

  "You want me, sir?"

  "We got through. All three of us." He performed a brief fandango. "Now's the time. The bottle, man. Come on, give with that bottle."

  "I am most pleased to learn of your success, sir," said Billings, openly tickled pink.

  "Thank you, Billings. And now's the time to celebrate. Get us the bottle and some glasses."

  "At eight-thirty, sir."

  McShane glanced at his watch. "Hey, that's in one hour's time. What's the idea?"

  "I have readied paper and envelopes on your desk, sir. Naturally, you will wish to inform your parents of the result. Your mother especially will be happy to learn of your progress."

  "My mother especially?" McShane stared at him. "Why not my father?"

  "Your father will be most pleased, also," assured Billings. "But generally speaking, sir, mothers tend to be less confident and more anxious."

  "That comes straight from one who knows," commented McShane for the benefit of the others. He returned attention to Billings. "How long have you been a mother?"

  "For forty years, sir."

  The three went silent. McShane's features softened and his voice became unusually gentle.

  "I know what you mean, Billings. We'll have our little party just when you say."

  "At eight-thirty to the minute, sir," said Billings. "I will bring glasses and soda."

  He departed, Simcox and Fane following. McShane brooded out the window for a while, then went to his desk, reached for pen and paper.

  "Dear Mother,—"

  The long, vast, incredibly complicated whirl of four years sufficiently jam-packed to simulate a lifetime. Lectures, advice, the din of machine shops, the deafening roar of testpits, banks of instructions with winking lights and flickering needles, starfields on the cinema screen, equations six pages long, ball games, ceremonial parades with bands playing and banners flying, medical check-ups, blood-counts, blackouts in the centrifuge, snap questions, examinations.

  More examinations, more stinkers, more traps. More lectures each deeper than its predecessor. More advice from all quarters
high and low.

  "You've got to be saturated with a powerful and potent education to handle space and all its problems. We're giving you a long, strong dose of it here. It's a very complex medicine of which every number of the staff is a part. Even your personal servant is a minor ingredient."

  "The moment you take up active service as an officer every virtue and every fault is enlarged ten diameters by those under you. A little conceit then gets magnified into insufferable arrogance."

  "The latter half of the fourth year is always extremely wearing, sir. May I venture to suggest that a little less relaxation in the noisiest quarter of town and a little more in bed—"