Barton was ’casting the latest news tape to arrive. Mostly it reported Christmas and Chanukkah festivities on Earth, this year especially elaborate because the Universal Love movement had grown so popular. But there were stories as well on a complete Neanderthal skeleton discovered in North Africa, and almost the whole of Apollo turning out to rescue a little boy trapped in a broken-down mono shuttle, and Lima’s new fusion-power plant, and an acrimonious election campaign in Russia, and a spectacularly messy divorce in the Philippine royal family, and a riot in New York Welfare, and a Bangkok fashion czar decreeing triangular cloaks… Toward the end, it was announced that a skirmish had occurred between Terrestrial and Naqsan space forces in the Vega sector. As for Mundomar, nothing special—
Major Samuel McDowell, Eleutherian liaison officer, stirred. “Did you notice the date on that tape?” he asked. “Happens to be the day my brother-in-law got killed.”
“Huh?” somebody said. “Too bad. I’m sorry.”
“He wasn’t the only one,” McDowell said. “Enemy came out of the jungle and shot up the whole village where his unit was. Lot of civilians bought it too. Filthy terrorists.”
“You call your men in Hat’hara guerrillas,” Conway couldn’t help muttering.
McDowell gave him a whetted stare. “Where are your sympathies, Ensign?”
Against the inward-crowding heat, Conway felt his cheeks and ears flush. “I’m a combat flyer, Major,” he snapped. I don’t owe servility to a ranking officer of a foreign country, do I? He nearly added that they have a proverb on Earth about not looking gift horses in the teeth, but checked himself. If McDowell complained to Captain Jacobowitz, Ensign Conway might go on the carpet. Besides, the poor devil had suffered grief, and did see the war as a matter of survival. “No offense intended, sir.”
McDowell eased a trifle. “Oh, I’m not a fanatic,” he said. “If the croakers would be reasonable—but think. To Earth, what’s going on here is a sideshow’ Or less than that. Can’t they see we’re bleeding?”
In a quick and brilliant series of actions, human airmen cleared the skies. Tsheyakkans were no match for them.
After that it should have been easy to interdict supply lines and reduce cut-off invasion forces from above. Don Conway personally sent a surface water ship to the bottom and probably a submarine freighter. But the next time around, a missile speared his flyer, as was happening unexpectedly often to his corps. He ejected, and bobbed about in the sea till a rescue bug hooked him out.
This earned him a week’s R R in Barton. A polite gentleman from Earth phoned him at his hotel room, requested an interview, and treated him to the kind of dinner he had not guessed existed on Mundomar. In time, after numerous cordialities, the gentleman got to the point.
“I gather you’ve been on the Shka coast. It’s devilish hard to collect any real information about that area. The Eleutherian authorities sit on everything and—Well, see here, Ensign. You’re not an Eleutherian, you’re a… m-m-m, you’re under the jurisdiction of the World Federation. Think of that as your nationality, where your loyalty belongs. And people, important people in the Federation would definitely like to know if their suspicions are right, about the oil in Shka.”
“Oil?” Conway was astounded.
“Yes. I’m not a scientist, but it works like this. Mundomar had an unusual evolution, starting when the whole system was a condensing dust cloud and going on through a mess of complicated planetology and biochemistry. Its petroleum contains several pretty unique materials. Extremely valuable as starting points for organic syntheses, like medicines, you know? Sure, we can manufacture the stuff from scratch, but pumping it out of the ground here and shipping it home is a hell of a lot cheaper. (Say, do you care for another drink?) The question is, when peace comes and the planet’s parceled out, will the rich sources be in friendly hands, or the hands of ungrateful sons of bitches who’ll screw us on price, or even the hands—flippers—of croakers? If Earth knew for sure, confidentially, what territories have these deposits, well, we could better plan our military campaigns and make our political deals. I don’t imagine you have the complete information; but every scrap helps. Helps the Federation, that is.”
Conway almost said he had none, and if he did would still have seen no particular reason to contribute to the profits of producers or the kudos of commissioners. He halted his larynx in time, and spoke according to a swiftly devised plan. Item for item, he bought drinks with hints, and finally a night’s worth of delightful girl with an outright work of his imagination.
He didn’t think the Earthling would mind too much, being after all on expense account. Anyway, his furlough was soon over and he returned to combat.
For a while, that consisted of runs over wilderness. He blackened the areas he was told to blacken, and got no more reply than rifle bullets. The trouble was the job had no end.
“They don’t quit, the slimy bastards,” said a captain of armored infantry. Conway had burned out a generator and landed for help at an advanced Eleutherian post. It was a village lately recaptured, ruins in the rain, full of a rotten-sweet odor. Humans rarely bothered to bury Naqsans, whose corpses couldn’t infect them. The captain spat on one. “They can live off this country better than we can. And their mother world’s getting war supplies through to them—”
His gaze went to a fence which confined a number of prisoners. They weren’t mistreated; but nobody here spoke any language of theirs, and physicians who knew their ailments were in short supply. The big seal-shapes comforted each other as best they might. “We’ll collect plenty more like those, though,” the captain said, “A hard push is in the works. You’ll be busy yourself, Ensign.”
Conway flew high above the clouds, far into the stratosphere. Beneath him shone whiteness, around him deep blue and his companion warriors, above him the sun and a few brightest stars. But mostly he saw Ishtar.
And felt it, heard it, smelted it, tasted it. When he was little, how infinitely tall his father was, and how beautiful his mother. And Jill and Alice were pests be couldn’t have done without. When Larreka came around, he’d smoldered with jealousy at the way the soldier favored Jill; but he took overnight boat trips on the Jayin with Dad, just the two of them waking up in an enormous misty morning… He remembered woods and seas, his early discovery of the arts of Earth, an eo-sweetheart, O God, a triple daybreak seen from climbed heights in the Thunderhead Range…
His earphones alerted him. What? Were any bandits left?
Their speed into his vision was terrifying. They were not the kind he had encountered before. Gaunt delta wings, these bore a wheel emblem whose recognition struck like a fist, Naqsa’s. The League itself. Yonder pilots weren’t half-trained colonists stuffed into unfamiliar machines. Naqsa had followed Earth’s lead and sent air corps regulars.
“Hang onto your scalps, boys,” said Conway’s commander; and the two squadrons penetrated.
It was raining when he got his consciousness back. Jungle crowded the wreckage of his flyer. He had no memory of being hit or of a crash landing.
Mainly he knew pain. Blood was all over everything. His left leg was crimson pulp from which jutted bone splinters. He thought dimly that he must have broken ribs too, because each shallow breath bun so. The universe had a scratch across it that he discovered was in his right eye.
He fumbled at his radio. Nothing happened. The canopy was burst open. Rain hammered and stammered over him. Where was his first aid kit? Where the fuck was his God damned first aid kit?
He found it at last and tried to prepare a hypospray, to dull the pain enough that he could think. His shaky hands kept dropping the apparatus. Presently he quit, since it hurt too much to bend over in his harness and grope after the stuff.