First Command (14 page)

“And you,” said Brasidus, “envy them that power.”

For long seconds the Captain glared at him across the desk. Then, “All right, I do. But it is for the good of the State that I am working against them.”

Perhaps, thought Brasidus. Perhaps. But he said nothing.

Chapter 20

CLAD IN A LABORING HELOT’S DRAB,
patched tunic, his feet unshod and filthy, his face and arms liberally besmeared with the dirt of the day’s toil, Brasidus sat hunched at one of the long tables in the Tavern of the Three Harpies. There were hoplites there as well as manual workers, but there was little chance that any of them would recognize him. Facial similarities were far from uncommon on Sparta.

He sat there, taking an occasional noisy gulp from his mug and listening.

One of the hoplites was holding forth to his companions. “Yes, it was on this very table that I had him. Or it. Good it was. You’ve no idea unless you’ve tried it yourself.”

“Must’ve been odd. Wrong, somehow.”

“It was odd, all right. But wrong nohow. This face-to-face business. And those two dirty great cushions for your chest to rest on . . .”

“Is that what they’re for?”

“Must be. Pity the doctors can’t turn out some of those creatures from their birth machine.”

“But they do. Yes. They do.”

Everybody turned to stare at the man who had just spoken. He was a stranger to Brasidus, but his voice and his appearance marked him for what he was. This was not the sort of inn that the nurses from the créche usually frequented—in an establishment such as this they would run a grave risk of suffering the same fate as the unfortunate Arcadian from the ship. “They do,” he repeated in his high-pitched sing-song, and looked straight at Brasidus. There was something in his manner that implied, And you know, too.

So this was the fellow agent whom Diomedes had told him that he would find in the tavern, the operative to whom he was to render assistance if necessary.

“And what do you know about it, dearie?” demanded the boastful hoplite.

“I’m a nurse . . .”

“That’s obvious, sweetie pie.”

“I’m a nurse, and I work at the créche. We nurses aren’t supposed to stray from our wards, but . . .”

“But with a snout like yours, you’re bound to be nosy,” said the hoplite laughing.

The nurse stroked his overlong proboscis with his right index finger, grinned slyly. “How right you are, dearie. I admit it. I like to know what’s going on. Oh, those doctors! They live in luxury, all right. You might think that practically all of the créche is taken up by wards and machinery and the like, but it’s not. More than half the building is their quarters. And the things they have! A heated swimming pool, even.”

“Decadent,” grunted a grizzled old sergeant.

“But nice. Especially in midwinter. Not that I’ve ever tried it myself. There’s a disused storeroom, and this pool is on the other side of its back wall. There’re some holes in the wall, where there used to be wiring or pipes or something. Big enough for a camera lens.” The nurse fished a large envelope from inside the breast of his white tunic, pulled from it a sheaf of glossy photographs.

“Lemme see. Yes, those are Arcadians, all right. Top-heavy, ain’t they, when you see them standing up. Wonder how they can walk without falling flat on their faces.”

“If they did, they’d bounce.”

“Look sort of unfinished lower down, don’t they?”

“Let me see!”

“Here, pass ‘em round, can’t you?”

Briefly, Brasidus had one of the prints in his possession. He was interested more in the likeness of the man standing by the pool than in that of his companion. Yes, it was Heraklion, all right, Heraklion without his robe but still, indubitably, the supercilious doctor.

“Must have come in that ship,” remarked somebody.

“No,” the nurse told him. “Oh, no. They’ve been in the créche for years.”

“You mean your precious doctors have always had them?”

“Yes. Nothing but the best for the guardians of the purity of our Spartan stock, dearie. But who are we to begrudge them their little comforts?”

“Soldiers, that’s who. It’s we who should be the top caste of this world, who should have the first pickings. After all, the King’s a soldier.”

“But the doctors made him, dearie. They made all of us.”

“Like hell they did. They just look after the birth machine. And if there wasn’t a machine, we’d manage all right, just as the animals do.”

“We might have to,” the nurse said. “I heard two of the doctors talking. They were saying that the people were having it too soft, that for the good of the race we should have to return to the old ways. They’re thinking of shutting the machine down.”

“What! How can you be a fighting man if you have to lug a child around with you?”

“But you said that we could manage all right without the doctors.”

“Yes. But that’s different. No, the way I see it is this. These doctors are getting scared of the military, but they know that if most of us are budding we shan’t be much good for fighting. Oh, the cunning swine! They just want things all their way all the time instead of for only most of the time.”

“But you can’t do anything about it,” the nurse said.

“Can’t we? Who have the weapons and the training to use ‘em? Not your doctors, that’s for certain. With no more than the men in this tavern, we could take the créche—and get our paws on to those Arcadians they’ve got stashed away there.”

“More than our paws!” shouted somebody.

“You’re talking mutiny and treason, hoplite,” protested the elderly sergeant.

“Am I?” The man was on his feet now, swaying drunkenly. “But the King himself had one of the doctors executed. That shows how much he thinks of ‘em!” He paused, striving for words. They came at last. “Here, on Sparta, it’s fair shares for all—excepting you poor damn helots, of course. But for the rest of us, the rulers, it should be share an’ share alike. Oh, I know that the colonel gets better pay, better grub an’ better booze than I do—but in the field he lives the same as his men, an’ all of us can become colonels ourselves if we put ourselves to it, an’, come to that, generals. But the colonels an’ the generals an’ the admirals don’t have Arcadians to keep their beds warm. Not even the King does. An’ now there’s some of us who know what it’s like. An’ there’s some of us who want more of it.”

“They’re plenty of Arcadians aboard the spaceship,” somebody suggested.

“I may be drunk, fellow, but I’m not that drunk. The spaceship’s a battlewagon, and I’ve heard that the captain of her has already threatened to use his guns and missiles. No, the créche’ll be easy to take.”

“Sit down, you fool!” ordered the elderly sergeant. “You got off light after you assaulted the Arcadian spaceman, but he was only a foreigner. Now you’re inciting to riot, mutiny, and the gods alone know what else. The police will use more than stun guns on you this time.”

“Will they, old-timer? Will they? And what if they do? A man can die only once. What I did to that Arcadian has done something to me, to me, do you hear? I have to do it again, even though I get shot for it.” The man’s eyes were crazy and his lips, foam-flecked. “You don’t know what it was like. You’ll never know, until you do it. Don’t talk to me about boys, or about soft, puling nurses like our long-nosed friend here. The doctors have the best there is, the best that there can ever be, and they should be made to share it!”

“The police . . .” began the sergeant.

“Yes. The police. Now let me tell you, old-timer, that I kept my ears flapping while they had me in their barracks. Practically every man has been called out to guard the spaceport—the spaceport, do you hear? That alien captain’s afraid that there’ll be a mob coming out to take his pretty Arcadians by force, and fat old Captain Diomedes is afraid that the space commander’ll start firing off in all directions if his ship and his little pets are menaced. By the time that the police get back to the city, every Arcadian in the créche’ll know what a real man is like, an’ we shall all be tucked up in our cots in our quarters sleeping innocently.”

“I didn’t see a single policeman on my way here,” contributed the nurse. “I wondered why.” And then, in spurious alarm, “But you can’t. You mustn’t. You mustn’t attack the créche!”

“And who says I mustn’t? You, you feeble imitation of a . . . a . . .” He concluded triumphantly, “of an alien monster! Yes, that’s a point. All this talk of them as alien monsters. It was only to put us off. But now we know. Or some of us know. Who’s with me?”

The fools, thought Brasidus, the fools! as he listened to the crash of overturned benches, as he watched almost all the customers of the tavern, helots as well as hoplites, jump to their feet.

“The fools,” he muttered aloud.

“And you would have been with them,” whispered the nurse, “if I hadn’t slipped a capsule into your drink.” And then Brasidus saw the thin wisp of almost invisible vapor that was still trickling from the envelope in which the photographs had been packed. “I have access to certain drugs,” said the man smugly, “and this one is used in our schoolrooms. It enhances the susceptibility of the students.”

“Students,” repeated Brasidus disgustedly.

“They have a lot to learn, Lieutenant,” the nurse told him.

“And so have I. I want to see what happens.”

“Your orders were to protect me.”

“There’s nobody here to protect you from, except that old sergeant. But why wasn’t he affected?”

“Too old,” said the nurse.

“Then you’re quite safe.”

Brasidus made his way from the tavern out into the street.

Chapter 21

HE WOULD HAVE RETREATED
to the safety of the inn, but he was given no opportunity to do so. A roaring torrent of men swept along the street, hoplites and helots, shouting, cursing and screaming. He was caught up by the human tide, buffeted and jostled, crying out with pain himself when a heavy, military sandal smashed down on one of his bare feet. He was sucked into the mob, made part of it, became just one tiny drop of water in the angry wave that was rearing up to smash down upon the créche.

At first, he was fighting only to keep upright, to save himself from falling, from being trampled underfoot. And then—slowly, carefully and, at times, viciously—he began to edge out toward the fringe of the living current. At last he was able to stumble into a cross alley where he stood panting, recovering his breath, watching the rioters stream past.

Then he was able to think.

It seemed obvious to him that Diomedes must have planted his agents in more than one tavern. It was obvious, too, that Diomedes, ever the opportunist, had regarded the unfortunate incident in the Three Harpies as a heaven-sent opportunity for rabble-rousing—and as an excuse for the withdrawal of all police from the city. And that is all that it was—an excuse. It was doubtful, thought Brasidus, that Grimes had demanded protection. The spaceman was quite capable of looking after himself and his own people—and if the situation got really out of hand he could always lift ship at a second’s notice.

But there were still puzzling features in the situation. The military police were under the command of General Rexenor, with the usual tally of colonels and majors subordinate to him. Diomedes was only a captain. How much power did the man wield? How much backing had he? Was he—and this seemed more than likely—answerable only to the palace?

The mob was thinning out now; there were only the stragglers half-running, stumbling over the cobblestones. And already the first of the scavengers were emerging from their hiding places, sniffing cautiously at the crumpled bodies of those who had been crushed and trampled. Brasidus fell in with the tattered rearguard, kept pace with a withered, elderly man in rough and dirty working clothes.

“Don’t . . . know . . . why . . . . we . . . bother . . .” grunted this individual between gasping breaths. “Bloody . . . hoplites . . . ‘ll . . . be . . . there . . . first. All . . . the . . . bloody . . . pickings . . . as . . . bloody . . . usual.”

“What pickings?”

“Food . . . wine . . . Those . . . bloody . . . doctors . . . worse . . . ‘n . . . bloody . . . soldiers . . . Small . . . wonder . . . the . . . King . . . has . . . turned . . . against . . . ‘em.”

“And . . . the Arcadians?”

“Wouldn’t . . . touch . . . one . . . o’ . . . them . . . wi’ . . . barge . . . pole. Unsightly . . . monsters.”

Ahead, the roar of the mob had risen to an ugly and frightening intensity. There were flames, too, leaping high, a billowing glare in the night sky. The crowd had broken into a villa close by the créche, the Club House of the senior nursing staff. They had dragged furniture out into the roadway and set fire to it. Some of its unfortunate owners fluttered ineffectually about the blaze and, until one of them had the sense to organize his mates into a bucket party, were treated with rough derision only. And then the crowd turned upon the firemen, beating them, even throwing three of them into the bonfire. Two of them managed to scramble clear and ran, screaming, their robes ablaze. The other just lay there, writhing and shrieking.

Brasidus was sickened. There was nothing that he could do. He was alone and unarmed—and most of the soldiers among the rioters carried their short swords and some of them were already using them, hacking down the surviving nurses who were still foolish enough to try to save their property. There was nothing at all that he could do—and he should have been in uniform, not in these rags, and armed, with a squad of men at his command, doing his utmost to quell the disorder.

Damn Diomedes! he thought. He knew, with sudden clarity, where his real loyalties lay—to the maintenance of law and order and, on a more personal level, to his friend Achron, on duty inside the créche and soon, almost inevitably, to be treated as had been these hacked and incinerated colleagues of his.

The Andronicus warehouse . . .

Nobody noticed him as he crossed the road to that building; the main body of the rioters was attempting to force the huge door of the créche with a battering ram improvised from a torn-down streetlamp standard. And then, looking at the massive door set in the black, featureless wall of the warehouse, he realized that he was in dire need of such an implement himself. He could, he knew, enlist the aid of men on the fringes of the crowd eager for some violence in which they, themselves, could take part—but that was the last thing that he wanted. He would enter the créche alone, if at all.