But she seemed rooted to where she sat. Her eyes were still round.
As though by intuition she said, very slowly, “Jim Hawkins. Jim’s outside covering. James Hawkins. Captain James Hawkins of the Elite Service. The right hand man of… he called you Killer. Why… why you’re Killer Caine.”
His face stiffened slightly. “My mother’s name was Alshuler. I took it to avoid… notoriety. Let’s go, Jill. I think you’re safe, but it’s just possible that there’re more of them in the vicinity.”
“But what are you doing here? How are you connected with this whole affair?”
He said urgently, “Listen. We don’t have time for explanations. I’m evidently in the same thing you are. Katz told me I ran up the highest Ability Quotient of all the demobilized military, so I was picked for this educational project. Let’s go.”
But she was still staring, and there was a sick expression on her face. She said, very slowly. “Ability Quotient? You, the highest of all discharged men? The millions of them? In what field is your real greatest ability. Killer Caine?”
PART TWO
Chapter Ten
In the hallway, near the door, Bert Alshuler paused, stood to one side, drew a curtain at one of the windows a bit and peered out. Jim was leaning nonchalantly on one of the porch pillars, his pistol evidently back in his belt.
Jill said coldly, “How does one acquire a name like Killer Caine?”
He shot her a look. “It starts as a gag. A couple of your buddies call you that once or twice for laughs.”
He threw the power pack of his pistol and dropped it into his left pocket and brought forth a fresh one from his right jacket pocket.
He said, “Then one day you’re in the middle of a big fire fight and just by chance the news boys have a camera on you. Not that you give a damn at the time. All you’re interested in is getting through the razzle alive. Later on, when it’s over, one of the newsmen comes over to get your name and a little interview. So he hears one of your squad call you Killer and picks it up. He uses it in the story, and a couple of months later, a magazine comes around and everybody in the company reads about it and thinks it’s very funny. Which it is… I guess.”
He jammed the fresh power pack into the butt of the laser pistol and looked out the window again. He said, “So from then on you can’t ditch the name. You get a little teed off a couple of times and go a round with a couple of them, but it doesn’t do any good. The whole company calls you that.”
“I see,” she said.
“Come on, it’s clear,” he said. “Move fast and get into the back of the car. I don’t think there’s any more of them around.”
They left the house; Jim grinned at her and said, “Boy Scouts to the rescue.”
Her face was wan. She said, “How many of them are dead back there?”
Bert didn’t answer He said to Jim, “Sit in the back with her and keep a lookout to the rear.”
“Right.”
In the car, Kenneth Kneedler was sitting where they had left him in the front seat. He was staring straight ahead, but his eyes were unseeing, glazed. He was, Bert decided, probably regretting breaking so easily.
He started up and began retracing their route.
Jill said, her voice empty. “But how does one go about deserving a name like that? How does one become the most decorated man of a war?”
Jim looked at her askance from the side of his eyes, but then out the back window again, looking for pursuit.
Bert Alshuler said, after taking a deep breath, “By accident. Usually, while doing everything you can to keep olive. Usually, while you’re scared stiff inside. Sergeant Alvin York in the First World War and Audie Murphy in the Second didn’t have decorations in mind when they did their thing. Neither did I in the Asian War.”
He took another deep breath before going on “After that TV thing, they field commissioned me. I was just a lad but the brass likes that kind of publicity. It goes over very well back home; good for civilian morale. At any rate, a few months later somebody pulled a razzle and the company was sent in against a gook outfit that was supposed to be company strength too, but wasn’t. It was a battalion. And we were pinned down on top of a ridge and stayed pinned down for six days. They couldn’t get in to relieve us because the monsoon rains were on. So when the helio-jets finally managed to come in and run the gooks off, I was alone on top of the hill.”
“Alone?” she said weakly.
“Alone. With all my lieutenants and sergeants and corporals and privates, and even a chaplain and two news reporters, scattered around, all up and down that ridge. The machine gun ammunition was all gone, and all the grenades and all the mortar shells and the food and the water. We’d been holding them off with small arms fire for the past twenty-four hours. And my last man died only fifteen minutes before the relief came.”
“So when they finally came in, complete as usual with the TV crews, you stand up, all alone, and tuck your automatic under your arm, like you were going out after rabbits or quail, and you start down the hill, still on your feet, though you’ve taken several hits. And there they are, at the foot of the ridge, taking in all the bodies, both of the company and the gooks, that are spread so thick you can hardly walk without stepping on one. So on your way down you fish a stogie cigar from your shirt pocket and stick it in your mouth and you’re awfully tired, but you’re still on your feet. And when you come up on the TV camera crew, in their natty, ironed-that-morning outfits, the newsman on the mike says, ‘It’s Killer Caine. The sole survivor is Captain Killer Caine.’ And you walk up to him real close and look into his face and say, ‘Got a match, friend?’ ”
Bert Alshuler took a deep breath. “Possibly you saw that bit of asinine bravado on the TV screen at the time. I understand it was rather universally shown. I don’t even remember it happening. I don’t remember anything of those last couple of days. I was probably in semi-shock.”
Jill shook her head. “I never watched the war propaganda. I was a pacifist.”
“So was I,” Bert said wearily. “Back when they grabbed me and stuck me in. They didn’t accept whatever plea I made and I was inducted.”
Jim Hawkins chuckled at that.
Bert looked over his shoulder at him. “What’s so funny, you grinning hyena? You probably volunteered.”
Jim chortled. “You, a pacifist.”
Bert wound it up to Jill. “So in a week or so, when they decided to create the Elite Service, they bounced me up to major and I was in command. And Jim, here, my second. That’s where most of the notoriety came in, when the Elite Service was exposed a few times in some of the anti-war left wing newspapers and magazines.”
Jill looked at Jim Hawkins, next to her. “Why didn’t you bother to change you name and undergo plastic surgery?”
Jim grinned in put-on modesty. “Who ever hears of the third most highly decorated man to come out of a war? Or the second, for that matter. Who took the second Bert?”
“Darned if I know. I didn’t even know you were third.”
“My old buddy,” Jim said.
They had come to the dispatcher at the entry to the underground of the university city. Bert brought the electro-steamer to a halt, threw it off manual and said into the screen, “Administration Building.”
The auto-drive took over and they eased forward and into the traffic.
For the first time since they had left the house in which Jill had been held, Kenneth Kneedler spoke up. He said, “Where are you taking me? I demand to be released.”
Jim chuckled. He seemed to be in a chuckling mood, Bert thought sourly. They had about as much reason to be amused as they did to take Holy Orders.