A brief multidirectional movement occurred and the section rearranged itself. Nobody took the wrong place, nobody got their automatic rifles tangled together, no one slipped, and no one lost his beret, as had happened in previous drills. Maxim towered up on the right flank of the reserve, still grinning from ear to ear. Gai suddenly got the wild idea that Maxim regarded all of this as just an amusing game. That wasn’t the case, of course, because it simply couldn’t be the case. Undoubtedly that idiotic grin was to blame…
“Pretty good,” Gai growled, imitating Corporal Serembesh, and cast a benign glance at Pandi as if to say, Well done, old man, you drilled them into shape. “Attention!” he said. “Section, fall in!”
Another brief multidirectional movement that was splendid and quite beautiful in its impeccable precision, and once again the section was standing there before him in a simple, single rank. Good! Simply wonderful! That actually gave him a chilly kind of shudder inside. Gai clasped his hands behind his back again and started walking up and down.
“Guardsmen!” he said. “We are the state’s buttress and its only hope in these difficult times. The Unknown Fathers have nobody but us on whom they can unhesitatingly rely.” This was the truth, the simple, plain truth, and there was both allure and self-abnegation in that. “The chaos resulting from the criminal war may have blown over, but its consequences are still painfully felt in the present day. Guardsmen, brothers! We have a single objective: to tear up by the roots everything that drags us back toward chaos. The enemy on our borders remains ever vigilant, he has attempted repeatedly and unsuccessfully to draw us into a new war on land and at sea, and it is only thanks to the courage and fortitude of our soldier brothers that the country is able to enjoy peace and repose. But no efforts by the army can lead us to our goal if the enemy within is not broken. And breaking the enemy within is our task, and only ours, Guardsmen. For the sake of this, we accept many sacrifices, we shatter the peace of our mothers, brothers, and children, we deprive the honest worker, the honest functionary, the honest merchant and manufacturer of their well-earned rest. They know why we are obliged to intrude into their homes, and they greet us like their best friends, like their defenders. Remember this, and do not allow yourselves to get carried away in the noble passion of carrying out your mission. A friend is a friend, and an enemy is an enemy… Are there any questions?”
“No!” roared the section, all twelve throats in unison.
“Attention! Thirty minutes to relax and check your equipment. Dismissed!”
The section scattered, and the guardsmen headed for the barracks in groups of two or three. Gai unhurriedly followed after them, feeling pleasantly drained. Maxim was waiting for him a little farther on, smiling in anticipation.
“Let’s have a game of words,” he suggested.
Gai inwardly groaned. If he could just call him to order somehow! What could be more unnatural than a candidate, a dull blockhead, pestering a corporal with familiar comments half an hour before the start of an operation!
“This isn’t the time,” he said as drily as he could manage.
“Are you nervous?” Maxim asked in a sympathetic voice.
Gai stopped and raised his eyes to the sky. What could he do, what could he do? It had turned out to be absolutely impossible to reprimand a good-natured, naive giant like this, who was also his sister’s rescuer, and in addition—at the end of the day—a man who was in every respect, apart from discipline in formation, far superior to Gai himself… Gai looked around and said in a pleading voice, “Listen, Mak, you’re putting me in an awkward situation. When we’re in barracks, I’m your corporal, your superior—I give the orders and you obey them. I’ve told you a hundred times—”
“But I’m willing to obey, give me an order!” Maxim protested. “I know what discipline is. Give me an order.”
“I’ve already given you one. Get on with checking your equipment.”
“No, I’m sorry, Gai, that isn’t the order you gave. You ordered us to relax and to check our equipment, have you forgotten? I’ve already checked my equipment, and now I’m relaxing. Let’s have a game, I’ve thought up a good word…”
“Mak, try to understand, a subordinate has the right to address a superior officer, first, only in the prescribed form, and second, exclusively on service business.”
“Yes, I remember. Paragraph nine… But that’s during duty time. And right now we’re relaxing.”
“What gave you the idea that I’m relaxing?” Gai asked. They were standing beside a mock-up of a wall with barbed wire, in a spot where, thank goodness, nobody could see them—nobody could see this huge tower of a man slumped against the wall and repeatedly trying to catch hold of his corporal’s button. “I only relax at home, but even at home I wouldn’t allow any subordinate to— Listen, let go of my button and fasten your own.”
Maxim fastened it and said, “One thing on duty and another at home. What’s the point?”
“Let’s not get into talking about that. I’m tired of telling you the same thing over and over again… By the way, when are you going to stop smiling in formation?”
“It doesn’t say anything about that in the regulations,” Maxim immediately responded. “And as for repeating the same thing over and over again, I’ll tell you this. Don’t take offense, Gai, I know that you’re not a speecher… not a declaimer… “
“Not who?”
“You’re not a person who knows how to speak beautifully.”
“An orator?”
“An orator… Yes, not an orator. But all the same. Today you gave a speech to us. Correct words, good words. Only when you talked to me at home about the objectives of the Guards and the situation in the country, it was very interesting. It was very much in your style. But here you say the same thing seven times, and not in your style. All very correct. All very identical. All very boring. Eh? You’re not offended?”
Gai wasn’t offended. That is, his vanity had been pricked by a cold little needle: until now he had thought that he spoke just as convincingly and smoothly as Corporal Serembesh or even Cornet To’ot. But then, if he thought about it, Corporal Serembesh and the cornet had also spent the last three years repeating the same things. And there was nothing surprising, let alone blameworthy, about that—after all, during those three years, no substantial changes had taken place in either the internal or the external situation.
“And where in the regulations does it say,” Gai chuckled, “that a subordinate can correct his superior?”
“It says just the opposite there,” Maxim admitted with a sigh. “But I don’t think that’s right. You listen to my advice when you’re solving ballistics problems, don’t you? And you listen to my comments when you make mistakes in the calculations.”
“That’s at home!” Gai heatedly exclaimed. “Everything is possible at home.”
“But what if you give us the wrong aim at firing practice? What if you haven’t properly corrected for the wind? Eh?”