“I was talking to Sergeant Axbird this afternoon,” Ruthven said to keep from fidgeting. “She was my platoon sergeant, you know. I was wondering how she was coming along?”
Parvati looked at Ruthven through the display. After a moment he said, “Mistress Axbird’s physical recovery has gone as far as it can. How she does now depends on her own abilities and the degree to which she learns to use her new prosthetics. If you are her friend, you will encourage her to show more initiative in that regard.”
“Ah,” Ruthven said. “I see. I’m cleared for duty, though, Doctor. Right?”
He wondered if he ought to stand up again. Parvati always used the bed’s own display instead of downloading the information into a clipboard.
“Are you still feeling pain in your hip, Lieutenant?” the doctor asked, apparently oblivious of Ruthven’s question.
“No,” Ruthven lied. “Well, not really. You know, I get a little, you know, tickle from time to time. I guess that’ll go away pretty quick, right?”
It struck Ruthven that the diagnostic display would include blood pressure, heart rate, and all the other physical indicators of stress. He jumped up quickly. Pain exploded from his hip; he staggered forward. His mouth was open to gasp, but his paralyzed diaphragm couldn’t force the air out of his lungs.
“Lieutenant?” Parvati said, stepping forward.
“I’m all right!” said Ruthven. Sweat beaded his forehead. “I just tripped on the locker! Bloody thing!”
“I see,” said Parvati in a neutral tone. “Well, Lieutenant, your recovery seems to be proceeding most satisfactorily. I’d like you to remain here for a few days, however, so that some of my colleagues can check you over.”
“You mean Psych, don’t you?” Ruthven said. His hands clenched and unclenched. “Look, Doc, I don’t need that and I sure don’t want it. Just sign me out, got it?”
“Lieutenant Ruthven, you were seriously injured,” the doctor said calmly. “I would be derelict in my duties if I didn’t consider the possibility that the damage I was able to see had not caused additional damage beyond my purview. I wish to refer you to specialists in psychological trauma, yes.”
“Do you?” Ruthven said. His voice was rising, but he couldn’t help it. “Well, you let me worry about that, all right? You’re a nice guy, Doc, but you said it: my psychology is none of your business! Now, you clear me back to my unit, or I’ll take it over your head. You can explain to Colonel Hammer why you’re dicking around a platoon leader whose troops need him in the field!”
“I see,” said the doctor without any inflection. “I do not have the authority to hold you against your will, Lieutenant, but for your own sake I wish you would reconsider.”
“You said that,” Ruthven said. He bent and picked up his barracks bag. “Now, you do your job and let me get back to mine.”
Parvati made a slight bow. “As you wish,” he said. He touched the controller in his hand; the hologram vanished like cobwebs in a storm. “I will have an orderly come to take your bag.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Ruthven said harshly. “I can get it over to the transient barracks myself. They’ll find me a bunk there if there isn’t a way to get to E/1 still tonight. I just want to be out of this place ASAP.”
He didn’t know where the platoon was or who was commanding in his absence. Hassel, he hoped; it’d be awkward if Central’d brought in another officer already. He wondered how many replacements they’d gotten after the ratfuck at Firebase Courage.
“As you wish,” Parvati repeated, opening the door and stepping back for Ruthven to lead. “Ah? By the water pitcher, Lieutenant? The file is yours, I believe?”
Ruthven didn’t look over his shoulder. “No, not mine,” he said. “I was thinking about, you know, transferring out, but I couldn’t leave my platoon. E/1 really needs me, you know.”
He walked into the corridor, as tight as a compressed spring. Even before Axbird had come to see him, he’d been thinking of night and darkness and the faceless horror of living among people who didn’t know what it was like. Who’d never know what it was like.
The troopers of Platoon E/1 did need Henry Ruthven, he was sure.
But not as much as I need them, in the night and the unending darkness.
JIM
The Hammer series exists because Jim Baen first bought individual stories, then the books themselves.
These three volumes of The Complete Hammer’s Slammers are therefore the right place to print my obituary to my friend Jim.
Jim Baen called me on the afternoon of June 11, 2006. He generally phoned on weekends, and we’d usually talk a couple more times in the course of a week; but this was the last time.
In the course of the conversation he said, “You’ve got to write my obituary, you know.” I laughed (I’ll get to that) and said, “Sure, if I’m around—but remember, I’m the one who rides the motorcycle.”
So I’m writing this. Part of it’s adapted from the profile I did in 2000 for the program book of the Chicago Worldcon at which Jim was Editor Guest of Honor. They cut my original title, which Jim loved: The God of Baendom. I guess they thought it was undignified and whimsical.
The title was undignified and whimsical. So was Jim.
James Patrick Baen was born October 22, 1943, on the Pennsylvania-New York border, a long way by road or in culture from New York City. He was introduced to SF early through the magazines in a step-uncle’s attic, including the November, 1957, issue of Astounding with “The Gentle Earth” by Christopher Anvil.
The two books Jim most remembered as being formative influences were Fire-Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard and Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke. The theme of both short novels is that a youth from a decaying culture escapes the trap of accepted wisdom and saves his people despite themselves. This is a fair description of Jim’s life in SF: he was always his own man, always a maverick, and very often brilliantly successful because he didn’t listen to what other people thought.
For example, the traditional model of electronic publishing required that the works be encrypted. Jim thought that just made it hard for people to read books, the worst mistake a publisher could make. His e-texts were DRM-free and in a variety of common formats.
While e-publishing has been a costly waste of effort for others, Baen Books quickly began earning more from electronic sales than it did from book sales in Canada ($6,000/month). By the time of Jim’s death, the figure had risen to ten times that.
Jim didn’t forget his friends. In later years he arranged for the expansion of Fire-Hunter so that he could republish it (as The Hunter Returns, originally the title of the Charles R. Knight painting Jim put on the cover).
Though Clarke didn’t need help to keep his books in print the way Kjelgaard did, Jim didn’t forget him either. Jim called me for help a week before his stroke, because Amazon.com had asked him to list the ten SF novels that everyone needed to read to understand the field. Against the Fall of Night was one of the titles that we settled on.
Jim’s father died at age fifty; he and his stepfather didn’t warm to one another. Jim left home at seventeen and lived on the streets for several months, losing weight that he couldn’t at the time afford. He enlisted in the army as the only available alternative to starving to death.
Jim spent his military career in Bavaria where he worked for the Army Security Agency as a Morse Code Intercept Operator, monitoring transmissions from a Soviet callsign that was probably an armored corps. One night he determined that “his” Soviet formation was moving swiftly toward the border. This turned out to be an unannounced training exercise—but if World War III had broken out in 1960, Jim would’ve been the person who announced it.