“Why the hell don’t you watch where you’re going?” I said.
He picked himself up and dusted himself off. “Come now,” he said, “We’re both aware that you ran into me on purpose.”
“You want to make something of it?”
“On the contrary. But tell me, you’re a sergeant, aren’t you? I’m rather unfamiliar with the rating system. I haven’t had a chance to talk to one of you men yet.”
“I’m a staff sergeant.”
“How interesting. That’s a position of some authority, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I command a squad.”
“A squad? Oh yes, the basic small unit of a military force.”
“That’s right, eight men.”
“That must be challenging. Tell me, how much of the decision-making function do you exercise in the field?”
I was starting to answer when I caught on to what he was trying to do, but he seemed so sincerely interested in me that it was hard not to go along with him. “Quit trying to change the subject,” I said.
“Why, certainly, if you wish. But I really am interested.”
“I think I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”
“I hope you won’t,” he said. “And after all, it wouldn’t prove much. I quite agree that you’re a better fighter than I am.”
“What’dya mean by that?” I said. I kept looking for fear in his face, or anger, even, but there was none. He spoke slowly and evenly and seemed really more interested in what I was saying than in saving his skin.
“I’m a fairly decent athlete,” he said, “but quite untrained as fighter.”
“You’re a coward,” I said.
“I suppose that in your frame of reference I do seem a coward. I don’t want to fight and I won’t be angered. But from my standpoint, Sergeant, I’m not a coward at all. I’m simply not disturbed by what you’ve said. I know myself too well—my faults, my weaknesses, my strengths—and your accusations haven’t added any new perceptions about myself. And if they had, I would be more likely to thank you than fight you.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere and my heart wasn’t in it anymore anyway. Somehow, although he wasn’t more than a few years older than me, he managed to remind me of my father, or of how my father should have been. I moved on. I had to try a girl to satisfy myself about what Filippi had said about them.
It was twilight by then, and I was walking through one of the rolling green parks that dotted the city. The girl was small and slim with long brown hair worn straight down her back, her face young and pert.
“Hiya, babe, let’s you and me go off somewhere and make it,” I said.
She laughed a tinkling sort of laugh and said, “My name is Jodi.”
“I’m Kenny Oskowski,” I said. “Want to try a real man for a change?”
“I would like to know you better, if that’s what you mean.”
“Sure, babe. Let’s find a hotel and get acquainted.”
“I’d rather go for a walk. It’s an awfully nice evening. Wouldn’t you just as soon go for a walk?”
“Okay, we’ll walk,” I said. “I’m in no hurry.”
We walked. We had a milkshake together. (Me—a milkshake! But somehow I didn’t need whiskey with her, though she wouldn’t have minded if I’d wanted one.) We went bowling and walked some more and ended by sitting on a bench holding hands and listening to a band concert in the park.
At 10:30 I walked her home, and she was like my little sister instead of the pickup I’d tried for. I walked her to the door, feeling warm and hoping for a single chaste goodnight kiss.
“Would you like to stay all night with me, Kenny?” she said.
“I didn’t think you were that kind of girl, Jodi,” I said.
“What kind of girl? I like you. I enjoy your company.”
“But what about love?”
“I suppose that is love. Love isn’t something you can pin down.”
“Do you want to get married?”
“No, why? I like you now, or maybe love you, but that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with living with you for the rest of my life.”
So in the end we made love and I stayed with her all night, but gently and pleasantly, for its own sake and for our own. And in the morning I went back to the army, feeling as I had never felt before after an overnight pass, happy and at peace with the world, without a hangover or a sense of guilt or any bawdy stories to tell the troops.
And at Fort Morris I found the soldiers still talking war. Demanding that a war be made for them, or that Colonel Moss lead them against the civilians.
We trained all that day—more firing range, more squad tactics, more physical conditioning. In the afternoon all of the men who had not had their passes yet were given them and sent into Linkhorn.
They came straggling back, bitter and angry and frustrated, most of them before ten o’clock, having been unable to start any fights or cause any trouble. In the barracks they joined in little groups to talk of what they had seen and what they wanted to do to the civilians.
“Man, they’re dull,” Sergeant Olivier said. “Nicest thing we can do for them is to shoot them up a little and wake them up.”
“You can’t even start a fistfight with one of them,” I said. “How the hell do you expect to start a war?”
“Close up we have to talk to them,” he said. “You don’t have to talk to start a war. You just go in shooting.”
“But why do you want to start a war? What have they done to you?”
“When did you start being a peace lover?” Olivier said.
“Maybe last night. It seems a pretty happy world out there. Why should we destroy it?”
“Because it’s our job. You think a society like that one can last? Hell no. They’ll fall apart from sheer inertia.”
“I doubt it. But anyway, why should you care?”
“I’m a soldier.”
“Not any more. You’re going to be a civilian now, Sergeant Olivier.”
“You think I could stand to live like that? Day after day without any excitement? I’m a soldier and I’ve got to fight.”
“There aren’t any more wars.”
“There will be. If not now, eventually. Without us this fool country will be defenseless. It’s our duty to wake them up.”
Olivier spoke for all of them. Their faith in the future of wars was unshakable. War could no more be outgrown than sex.
“I see it this way,” Filippi said. “Colonel Moss will get fed up with waiting and move us against the city. After the city, the state. We’ll join up with the rest of the army and get this world back into the old groove.”
I quit arguing with them. I suddenly saw that I was the only one who didn’t think that it was our duty to destroy the society outside. And as Olivier and Filippi and the others talked of their plans for starting a war I realized that I was going to be fighting against them if they did. I retreated to my bunk to think.
Down the room I saw LaBonte, the new corpsman, doing the same. After a while I got up and walked down and sat on his bunk.
“What do you think?” I said.
“Think about what, Sarge? I was just resting.”
“No, LaBonte, you were thinking. You’re not a soldier like those guys. You came in for excitement, not blood. You’re thinking the same as I am.”
“How’s that, Sarge? How are you thinking?”
I looked around the room carefully. Speaking my mind was dangerous in a barracks full of soldiers looking for a fight. But no one was near, and I felt pretty sure of LaBonte.
“I’m thinking that if these guys move on the civilians, I’ll have to be on the civilian side,” I said.
“You’re crazy,” he said.
“I don’t know if I could stand living like they do, but this society looks pretty sane and honest to me. I think they really have outgrown war. I’m going into town tonight and warn the civilians. And if worse comes to worse, I’m going to help them defend themselves.”
“That’s treason,” LaBonte said. “Don’t talk treason to me.”
“I thought you might want to come along.”
“All right, maybe I do feel like you do, Sarge. But if we went in there and the army started a war, they’d gun us down on sight as traitors.”
“You’re probably right. But I’m going anyway. I’ve got to try to help.”
“Not me.”
“I’m going tonight. Are you going to report me?”
“No. I won’t do that. Not until tomorrow at least.”
“All right. But if you tell, I’ll kill you for it.”
“I won’t tell.”
I walked back to my bunk and lay working over my plan and thinking and waiting for lights out. Across the room the buzz of war talks continued. Taps blew at 11:00 and the men began to sack out and slowly the talk died and the barracks became still. I lay and waited and stared at the ceiling until 2:00, waiting for the last whisper to die out and the last man to fall asleep. Then I got up and dressed silently. I took my tommygun and Filippi’s rocket launcher and some of Ryan’s demolition equipment, fuses and explosives, and tiptoed out of the barracks, watching LaBonte as I passed to see if he would make an alarm. But he lay still.
There were two guards on duty at the gate, lazing around with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths.
“Where’ya heading with all that stuff, Sarge?” one of them asked. I recognized him as Don Carpenter from Charlie Company, a balding overaged corporal, back down to private for about the tenth time since the last war.
“Going into town to stir up a little excitement, Carp,” I said.
“Going to get the jump on the rest of the boys, huh?”
“That’s right. Start a little war of my own before the real one.”
“Aw, Sarge, you know there ain’t going to be any more wars. The civilians told us so.”
“That’s right. I forgot.”
“I ought to check your pass, Sarge. And I ought to make you leave that hardware here.”
“You ought to, but you won’t.”
“Nope. It’s too quiet for me. If you can stir up some action, I’m for it.”
So I passed out through the gate and marched down the road under the cool midnight sky, staggering under the tools of war.
I was almost to the center of Linkhorn before I saw anyone. Then it was what looked like policemen, two of them in a city car, but they carried no weapons that I could see and they didn’t talk like cops.
“Hello, soldier,” one of them said. “Nice night.”
“Take me to whoever runs this town, will you?” I said.
“We’ll be happy to. But what’s the rush, Sergeant? Let us buy you a cup of coffee or a drink. We’d like to hear about the army.”
“Look,” I said, “this is pretty urgent.”
“I’m sure it is,” the cop said. “You wouldn’t be walking into the city this late at night with all that equipment unless you had a pretty important reason. Why not tell me about it? Perhaps I can help you.”
“Turn off the psychology,” I said. “I’m on your side— you don’t have to soothe me down. I came to warn you that the army is likely to attack you. I want to help you defend yourself.”
“Why that’s certainly kind of you, but I wouldn’t imagine that the army will do anything this late at night. Come on and have a drink and rest.”
I turned my tommygun toward him. “Goddamn it,” I said. “Take me to whoever runs this place and quit psychoanalyzing me or I’ll start the war right here and now.”
He just sat there and grinned at me, cool and brave yet friendly. After a minute I lowered the tommygun and grinned back.
“You were taking a hell of a chance,” I said.
“I don’t think so. You came in to help us. If you’d come looking for a fight, I would have reacted differently.”
“Have it your own way. But remember that I do want to help. And that army isn’t going to sit out there forever, waiting for a war.”
I climbed in the patrol car and they drove me to an all-night restaurant. We sat for a while shooting the breeze. Once again, like the man I’d talked to, they seemed genuinely interested in me personally. After an hour they drove me to a hotel and got me a complimentary room. No one made any attempt to relieve me of my weapons, and before the cop left, he promised that a city official would be by to talk to me in the morning. I didn’t even try to sleep. I lay on the hotel bed and thought about what I’d done and what was likely to follow until the horizon showed rose and pink and the sky got blue and things began to move in the city around me.
The sun was well up before the city official called for me. He introduced himself as Stephen French, a short man in his middle forties, well built, gray at the temples and mild-mannered. The city council, he told me, was sitting in session, considering the army situation. He could conduct me to them so that I could tell them what I knew. In a few words, he made me feel very important.
We stopped downstairs for breakfast in the hotel dining room and over bacon and eggs Mr. French told me what he knew of the situation.
The army was not fully unfrozen all over the country. About a third of the units had been taken out of stasis to be decommissioned. The civilians had wanted to do it slowly in order to prevent the sudden influx of men from unbalancing society.
The plan to decommission the army had been brewing for some years but they had waited to make sure that war was actually no longer a threat. That the soldiers would not want to become civilians (and all over the country it was the same) had been something they hadn’t foreseen. A gap in their logic, Mr. French admitted with a wry smile. So now, all over the country, they were faced with angry, rebellious soldiers.
“What sort of weapons do you have, sir?” I asked.
“None. We gave up using weapons years ago. Even the police don’t use weapons anymore. But then we haven’t a crime problem anymore. About all the police do is help cats out of trees and look for stray children.”
“You must have some sort of weapons. Or at least machines to make them.”
“Yes, probably we could produce them. But even with weapons, we’re not soldiers. We couldn’t stand up against the army.”
“Couldn’t you produce one big bomb and wipe them out?”
He gave me a strange look. “No, I don’t think we’ll do that. That isn’t our way.”
“You won’t have any way if you don’t. They’ll wipe you out. What about a defensive weapon? Something to stop tanks from running and guns from shooting?”
“Yes, I believe we could produce something like that. But it wouldn’t solve anything. Your soldiers could wipe us out in hand-to-hand combat.”
I gave up on the weapon angle. “Society has certainly changed since the last war,” I said. “What happened?”
What he told me was too complicated to put down here. Basically, after the West had defeated the Afro-Asians, the Easterners had turned away from machinery and returned to an emphasis on meditation, the mind and philosophy. And, then, from the defeated, these things had swept the world, creating a worldwide society that used machines but was not very concerned with them. The important things became thought, self-analysis, and meditation, integrated with the Western behaviorial sciences.
The change had grown from within rather than by law. Finally the time had come when everyone was concerned with improving himself, with dominating his own ego, and seeking individual perfection rather than dominating others. Everyone could look back on a happy childhood, where formerly bad childhoods had always bred the dangerous people. Competition for gain and power died away and what remained was competition for the pleasure of measuring yourself against others, rather than to feed your ego.
Emotions were as highly respected as the intellect as long as they did not hurt others. People grew beyond the need for constant external entertainment. They found their pleasures in learning and creating. Of course, psychology and the other behaviorial sciences advanced tremendously. What t
he soldiers had run into when they tried to pick fights were competent lay psychoanalysts. “But that won’t save you from the army,” I told Mr. French. “You can’t talk to an army.”
“We realize that now,” he said. “We aren’t underestimating the danger of the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into.”
We came to the city hall, a modest stone and glass building set in the center of a park, and Mr. French led me in. It was all very casual. He took me to a man sitting at a desk by a tall set of doors and said, “I’ve brought the soldier who came in from the Fort last night.”
“Take him right in,” the man at the desk said. There were no guards or messengers or feverish conferences, and I was still carrying my weapons when we walked through the doors and found ourselves in the council chambers, a wide room with lots of windows and a large round table in the middle around which sat a group of simply dressed men and women.
“Welcome,” the man at the head of the table said. I recognized him as Mr. Karonopolis, the Mayor. “We appreciate your having come to help us.”
“I want to do anything I can,” I said.
“Please sit down,” he said. “We would like to ask a few questions.”
I sat. Mr. Karonopolis introduced me to the other members of the council and then they began to question me.
“What do you think are the feelings of most of the soldiers?”
“They’re angry,” I said. “They want to remain soldiers, to fight. They’re afraid that you’ll force them to be civilians.”
“But why is it that they don’t want to become civilians?”
“It’s just not their life. They’re soldiers. They look down on civilian life as dull and boring and insignificant.”
“But you feel differently?”
“No, not really. I just don’t think the army has a right to destroy this society. I don’t want to live in it, but it seems too good to destroy.”
“Would the other soldiers be willing to destroy it?”
“Yes, sir, I think so.”
A murmur ran through the chamber. “How do their officers feel?”
“I don’t really know, but I think they pretty much agree.”
“Do you think they will decide to attack?”
There Will Be War Volume II Page 23