The Regiment-A Trilogy

by John Dalmas

  And it had emerged at a separation of twelve miles again, like the patrol ship in the earlier system. Interesting.

  But this one had begun shooting virtually on emergence; there'd been time (milliseconds at most) for only the briefest identity scan. And it appeared that they'd known the intruder was himself, the one who'd attacked a patrol ship eight months and some eighty parsecs back. Message pods must have preceded their arrival here, and patrol ships were on orders to attack without further attempt at communication.

  Dimsikaloku had favored turning back then, taking home the information that an alien civilization existed here, the probable location of the aliens' home system, and what they'd inferred about alien technology. But the commodore had decided against it, a position easy to disagree with. He'd justified his stance—more to himself than to Dimsikaloku, because the rank was his—by pointing out their mission orders: The sultan had sent out this expedition—a politically risky decision—because he was intensely interested in the possibility of worlds to expand to. And as yet they had found none. Furthermore, the danger here could be minimized by remaining in hyperspace long enough to ensure they were out of the hostile sector.

  * * *

  All that had been more than eight imperial months earlier, and even now, Tarimenloku had every intention of staying in hyperspace for another three. Though it was hard to conceive of a politically unified sector even approaching that volume of space; the problems of communication, administration, and control would be impossible.

  Just now though his attention was on a most unusual major nodus. The apparency was of quadruple primaries near enough for a four-way tidal sharing of plasma, a situation which seemed physically impossible. He slowed, tempted to emerge long enough for a quick data recording. Not nearly what his survey ship might have given him, but enough to excite the astronomers back home.

  It was that slowing that exposed their pursuer and stunned Tarimenloku. A second hyperspace blip showed briefly on the monitor, very briefly, but unmistakably. They were being followed! Then the pursuer reacted to their slowing by slowing himself and disappearing from the monitor.

  And suddenly all the rationalizations for the prompt, close appearance of the alien ship in real-space, eight months earlier, came into doubt. It could well be the same ship they'd fired at fourteen months earlier!

  And obviously the aliens' instruments could perceive farther in hyperspace than theirs could. Which had allowed the alien to follow without being noticed.

  The commodore did something then that he'd never heard of before; something his chief science officer agreed theoretically might work. He sent a distortion bomb in the hyperspace "direction" of their shadow, their follower. Then, having given the two time to approximately coincide, he changed course by fifty degrees in the plane of the ecliptic, and briefly, seconds later, by thirty from the plane of the ecliptic.11 The purpose was to lose their pursuer. Several times during the watch, Tarimenloku slowed sharply again, and several times changed course. There was no further sign of pursuit, which was somewhat reassuring but by no means proof of anything.

  Meanwhile they were well off the course they'd been on, the one prescribed by admiralty staff. (And the one described by Master Tso-Ban, who was no longer monitoring.) But this seemed substantially safer. It could not be extrapolated by their ex-pursuer, if in fact they'd rid themselves of him, and it was consistent with mission orders as drafted by the sultan, which included the line "with due regard to a successful return."

  Of course, they had no locational objective anyway.

  19

  Rifles slung, A Company double-timed down the road, carrying the almost ever-present and now even heavier sandbags. They trotted through a cloud of fog—their breath—and nine inches of new snow. It was the coldest day they'd seen here, for some the coldest they'd ever seen.

  Still, the gills of their winter field uniforms were open, the earflaps of their helmet liners were tucked up, and some had stuffed their finger mittens into their waist pockets. Standing in ranks that morning, they'd felt glum about the subzero cold, but exertion had soon warmed them.

  "How cold d'you think it is, Carrmak?" Jerym asked.

  "Ask Bahn. Maybe he's heard."

  "Bahn," someone else called, "how cold is it?"

  "It is exactly as cold as it is," Bahn answered cheerfully. There were groans.

  "I think my nostrils may have frozen," Markooris called out. "They feel funny."

  "That feeling in your nostrils is the hairs." Bahn said it without puffing. "When it is cold enough, the moisture on them freezes and they stiffen, tugging on the membrane."

  "Where did you learn that?" Jerym asked. "Not on Oven, I'll bet."

  "On Hemblin's World we fought in very cold conditions. And I never heard of anyone's nostrils freezing, although all of us froze the outside of our noses."

  "Does it hurt? To freeze your nose?" someone asked.

  "You do not even notice when your nose freezes. The ears though, and fingers and toes, you definitely notice."

  "How do you know when it happens then?"

  "Others tell you. It is visible; your nose turns gray. After it thaws, the skin splits, and a scab forms."

  Lieutenant Toma, who was leading A Company this morning, speeded the pace a little, as if to say that having breath enough to talk so much, they had breath enough to trot faster.

  Jerym thought of the T'swa, from such a hot world, having to fight in polarlike weather. He couldn't imagine them complaining though. Which made him think of Mellis, who complained a lot. Mellis wasn't with them today; he was getting interviewed—one of the last in the platoon. Maybe now he wouldn't hassle people to tell him what went on there. Some of the guys had been interviewed twice already—Romlar for example, and himself—and Esenrok was having his second this morning.

  He wondered if Mellis would still be a whiner when he came out. Interviews changed you. You could feel it in yourself and see it in other guys. In Romlar more than any of them. Romlar still seemed a little stupid—that hadn't much changed—but he was cheerful now, talked more, seemed less introverted. He even talked differently—more grammatically.

  Ahead someone farted, loud and long, to a mixture of groans and laughter. "Bressnik!" someone yelled, "back to the end of the line with you!" "Gentle Tunis," said someone else, "it's making my eyes water! They'll freeze on a morning like this!"

  First Platoon turned off on a side road. After half a mile more, Sergeant Dao led 2nd Platoon off on another, a road Jerym was sure they'd never been on before. It crossed an easy hill, then sloped gradually down until, after a mile or so, it ended in a small opening, where they halted. Around the opening was sparsely wooded swamp, dense with underbrush.

  Dao ordered them at ease, and they all stopped talking. "Now," he said, "you will apply your lessons in reading maps and compasses, to find your way over unfamiliar ground. You will travel by fire teams. Your squad sergeants will give each team a map. A course is marked on it, with bearings you will follow. Each course has five or six legs. All but the last leg end at a marked and numbered point where you will find an instruction to follow. The last leg will end at a point on a road, where you will be picked up and transported by vehicle to the compound for dinner. Do not be late, or you will go hungry."

  Their squad sergeants took command then, instructing. Each man was to be the compassman on at least one leg. Then they left, group by group on different bearings, disappearing into the thick brush. There were only four in Jerym's team; Esenrok was getting interviewed that morning. As team leader, Carrmak led the first leg.

  The damn brush was not only thick; it was about seven or eight feet tall and loaded with snow. But in the subzero cold, it didn't melt on your clothes, didn't even stick on them. Jerym quickly discovered why the trees were so sparse: A forest fire had killed most of the old stand, and in time most of the killed trees had fallen over, lying at different angles to the ground. Their snow-covered trunks had to be climbed over, crawled under, or b
ypassed, their uptilted root disks gone around. Jerym couldn't see more than fifty feet through it, which was about as far as they got before Carrmak called a halt.

  "I need something or someone to guide on." He pointed. "Alsnor, you'll be the next compassman, and the next compassman will always be the guide-on." He pointed. "Go through there till I tell you to stop."

  Jerym went, wearing his mittens now, parting the snowy brush with them, until Carrmak called for him to halt. He did, turning to look back. Carrmak was peering down the compass sight. "A couple steps that way," Carrmak said gesturing. "There! Right on!" Then he came with the others to where Jerym stood.

  "Tunis!" Jerym swore. "This is slow going! I hope this course isn't very long, or we won't get anything to eat."

  Carrmak shrugged. "Takes as long as it takes," he muttered, raising the compass. "And according to the map, the legs are only a quarter to a half mile long." He pointed. "Through there," he said, "and this time I'm not going to do any yelling. We'll do it right—pretend we're sneaking through enemy territory. So go about fifty, sixty feet and stop. If you can't see me then, backtrack till you can."

  Thinking that if the T'swa wanted them to keep quiet, they'd have said so, Jerym led off again. And again. It was tricky climbing over blowdowns with a bag of sand on his back; it kept overbalancing him, wanting to dump him on his face.

  It was a slow quarter mile before they hit the first check point, hit it right on—a post with a small, snowcapped box, and a small sign hung on it. Carrmak read the instructions aloud and took a coded tag from the box, evidence that they'd found the checkpoint. Then they went on, Jerym with the compass now, and Romlar as his guide-on. He almost missed the next checkpoint; they were only about fifteen feet off line, but on the wrong side of an uptilted root disk. It was Romlar that spotted it.

  Romlar turned out more than just lucky, Jerym decided. He turned out weird! It was his turn next as compassman. And instead of sending Markooris out as guide-on, Romlar flicked a glance at the compass, shoved it in a pocket, and bulled off through the brush. He couldn't possibly have picked out a useable mark to go to. Jerym looked at Carrmak, who opened his mouth to call to Romlar, then changed his mind and followed him. Romlar never slowed, never took the compass out of his pocket, just kept going.

  Halfway through his leg, which was a somewhat longer one, they came out of the swamp, the brush now replaced by sapling growth. The saplings weren't that thick, and they were vertical, not a tangle, while here the fire-killed older trees were mostly still standing. So the visibility was better and the walking easier; Romlar speeded almost to a jog. And hit his checkpoint dead on, grinning, pleased with himself. It was at the margin of unburned forest, into which they could see a lot farther. So Markooris didn't need a guide-on, either, though he used his compass. Here there was always a visible tree on line ahead, or near enough on line to correct course by eyeball.

  Each time Markooris took his next shot, they'd jog to the guide-on he'd chosen, usually a hundred feet or more. It was a half mile leg, and at the check point they found a snow-covered stack of slender logs—big posts, really, nine or ten feet long and about eight inches thick—roughly 120 to 150 pounds each. The instructions said each man was to carry one of these logs to the final checkpoint. Added to sixty pounds of sand, that was a lot.

  This was the kind of difficulty most trainees enjoyed best, even reveled in. They tipped the logs up, Carrmak helping the others get theirs balanced on the shoulder which didn't have the rifle slung on it. Then he shouldered his own. This last leg was Carrmak's again. They lumbered off with their burdens, Carrmak pausing as infrequently and briefly as possible for compass shots. At each pause, each trainee lowered one end of his log to the ground, resting for a few seconds while Carrmak found another guide-on.

  Before long they came out of the woods into a meadow, and saw the final post eighty yards ahead, with a T'swi waiting nearby on the road. Carrmak began to run with his cumbersome burden, the others galloping after. Jerym almost whooped, then remembered Carrmak's injunction against noise. When they reached the post and the grinning Sergeant Bahn, they let the logs roll off their now-sore shoulders, panting, sweating copiously. Breath and sweat had frozen crusty on their eyebrows, collars, and the rim of their helmets.

  "I radioed when I saw you coming," Bahn said. "A bus will be here soon."

  They stood waiting in the cold sunlight, and for a minute or so, no one spoke. Then Carrmak said to Bahn, "If you T'swa had to go from there to here, through all that brush, and you'd never been here before, how would you do it?"

  Bahn's eyebrows rose. "We would walk or run. As you did."

  "Would you use the compass?"

  "If necessary."

  Carrmak looked intently at the sergeant. " 'If necessary' isn't the kind of answer I'm looking for. Would you use the compass?"

  Bahn smiled slightly. "No, we would not. We would simply—go from there to here. Walking or running."

  Carrmak thumbed toward Romlar. "That's what he did, on his stretch: just barrelled off through the brush. I thought you ought to know he can do that."

  Jerym looked at Romlar, whose face was flushed but grinning.

  Then the bus came and picked them up. After awhile it had a load of guys and took them back to the compound.

  Jerym made a point of walking with Carrmak from the barracks to the messhall. "What in Tunis's name," he asked, "made you ask Bahn how they'd have done that course?"

  "Read Lormagen's book on the T'swa," Carrmak answered, "or just look at his cubes. On Kettle, the army set the T'swa down in the jungle, jungle they'd never seen before. And there weren't any maps or roads or anything. But the T'swa ran around all over the place, zigzagging and circling, hunting Birds and fighting them, and always got back to their rendezvous, their rally point. Never got lost. When Romlar started off like he did, I was going to stop him, but then I thought, no, I'll let him go. If the T'swa can do it, then probably some other people can too. Let him try."

  "But if he'd gotten us lost," Jerym objected, "we would've missed dinner."

  "Big deal. We've learned something—that Romlar can do it. And now the T'swa know. And Romlar feels good, the kind of feeling good that'll stay with him."

  Jerym nodded silently. He'd learned something just now, too: A way of looking at things, of considering importances. And a little more about the kind of guy that Carrmak was.

  * * *

  Second Platoon's noncoms had their own table. It was round, but wherever Dao sat was the head. Bahn sat down next to him and mentioned what Romlar had done. When Dao had finished eating, he went to the officers' table and told Lieutenant Dzo-Tar, while Captain Gotasu listened. From the A Company orderly room, Captain Gotasu phoned Colonel Dak-So, who told Colonel Voker, who phoned the civilian in charge of scheduling interviews. All in all it was no big deal, but it was the sort of thing they were watching for, expecting to see from some of their intentive warriors.

  When the company fell in for its afternoon training, Dao ordered Romlar to stay at the barracks. Someone would come to take him to an interview.

  20

  Romlar settled himself on the chair, glad it was the red-headed girl again who would interview him. He suspected that was how they did things—always gave you the same interviewer. And he didn't think of her as "just a girl" any more.

  "Cold out there," she said, glancing up as she arranged her notebook. "Did you train outdoors this morning?"

  "Yep."

  "What did you do?"

  Grinning he told her, including how he'd done his leg of the course. Mentally, psychically, he was far lighter than when she'd first seen him, much happier, far more confident.

  She grinned back at him. "Marvelous," she said. "I love it!" Then she moved to another subject. "We got a lot taken care of in our first two sessions. Now at the end of our last one, I asked if you still thought of yourself as stupid. And you said—" She paused as if inviting him to finish for her.

  "I said yeah, I
guess I was, but it didn't bother me anymore."

  "Right. How do you feel about that now?"

  "The same. I know I'm not as smart as most of the other guys, but that's all right. I'm me. I do some things better than most of them."

  "Good. So tell me a use for stupidity."

  "Huh! Well— I can't think of any."

  "Okay. Then imagine a use for stupidity."

  "Imagine? Well, uhh— If you're stupid, you don't get asked to do some stuff."

  "All right. Now give me something more specific than that."

  "Uhh . . . Well— People don't ask you to figure stuff out. They know you can't do it very good."

  "Good. Tell me something else you don't get asked to do if you're stupid."

  "You— You don't get asked to do some things that are really important."

  "Okay. Another."

  "You don't . . ." He stopped, eyes suddenly blank, face expressionless, mouth slightly open, and sat like that for a long minute.

  "Um-hm?" she nudged.

  He'd begun visibly to sweat. "You don't get asked— You don't get asked to decide things that other people's lives depend on." He'd said it in an undertone, little more than a whisper.

  "All right," she replied calmly. "What else don't you get asked to do?"

  For a moment he trembled, vibrated might be a better word, then began to jerk, then rock back and forth, rotating from the hips in utter silence. She watched him quietly for a minute, not nudging him with what she saw. Instead she simply repeated the question: "What else don't you get asked to do?"

  He croaked the words: "To lead."

  And with that her serious work began. Per instructions, ordinarily she tried to keep sessions to about an hour, two at most. This time it took nearly three before she had him through all of it, alert again and in good spirits. Actually very good spirits. And ravenous! She wrote him a chit to give to the cook at the project's small dining room; the snack room wouldn't be adequate to his needs. After that he went to one of the nap rooms and slept for more than an hour, dreaming swift eventful dreams he couldn't afterward remember.