“Something doesn’t add up here. If all your considerations are eminently practical, why did you carry the baron and risked the whole team, rather than administering the ‘strike of mercy’?”
“Where’s the contradiction? It’s plainly obvious that you have to help your comrade to the hilt, even at the greatest risk: you save him today, he’ll save you tomorrow. As for the ‘strike of mercy’, don’t worry – were it necessary, we would’ve done it in the best form… It used to be better in the old times, when wars were declared in advance, didn’t involve peasants, and a wounded man could simply surrender. Too bad that we weren’t born then, but no inhabitant of those glass-house times can cast a stone at us.”
“A beautiful exposition, Field Medic, sir, but I suspect that you’d ask the sergeant to do the ‘strike of mercy’. No? All right then, another question, again about practical logic. Have you considered that a leading physiologist sitting in Barad-Dur and studying antidotes professionally could save a lot more lives than a field medic?”
“Of course I’ve considered it. It’s just that – sometimes there are situations when a man has to do an obviously stupid thing just to retain his self-respect.”
“Even if this self-respect is ultimately bought with others’ lives?” “Well… I’m not sure. After all, the One may have His own ideas about that.”
“So you make the decision, but the One bears responsibility for it? Wonderful! Haven’t you told the same thing to Kumai in almost the exact same words I’ve just used? Remember? You had no chance, of course – once a Troll decides something, that’s the end of it. “We may not sit out the battle which will decide the fate of the Motherland” – and so an excellent mechanic becomes an army engineer, Second Class. A truly priceless acquisition for the South Army! In the meantime it seems to you that Sonya is looking at you strangely: sure, her brother is fighting at the front while her bridegroom is cutting up rabbits at the University like there’s not a war on. So then you can think of nothing better than to follow Kumai (truly it is said that stupidity is contagious), so that the girl is bereft of both brother and bridegroom. Am I right?”
For some time Haladdin stared at the flames dancing over the coals (strange thing: the fire keeps burning, although the nazgúl doesn’t seem to be adding any wood). He had the distinct feeling of having been exposed in something untoward. What the hell!
“In other words, doctor, your head is a total mess, if you pardon the expression. You can make decisions, no question about that, but can’t complete a single logical construct; rather, you slide into emotionalism. However, in our case this is actually not bad.”
“What’s not bad?”
“You see, should you decide to accept my proposition, you will thereby take on an opponent that is immeasurably more powerful than you are. However, your actions are frequently totally irrational, so he’ll have a hell of a time guessing what you’ll do. It is quite possible that this is our only hope.”
Chapter 16
“That’s interesting,” Haladdin said after thinking a little. “Go ahead, tell me your proposition, I’m intrigued.”
“Wait a bit, all in good time. First of all, be aware that your Sonya is alive and well, and even relatively safe. So you can actually take her and go to Umbar or Khand to continue your studies; after all, it is precisely the accumulation and preservation of knowledge that…”
“Enough already!” Haladdin grimaced. “I’m not leaving here for anywhere… that’s what you want to hear, right?”
“Right,” Sharya-Rana nodded. “However, a man should have a choice, and for men like you it’s especially important.”
“Ri–i-i-ight, just so that later you can shrug and say: ‘You got into this crap all by yourself, buddy – no one was prodding you with a sharp stick!’ What if I do, indeed, tell you to get lost and beat it to Umbar – what then?” “Well, you won’t. Haladdin, please don’t think that I’m daring you. There will be a lot of work to be done here, very hard and mortally dangerous work, so we will need everybody: soldiers, mechanics, poets…”
“Poets? Why those?”
“Seemingly, those will be needed no more than all the rest. We will have to save everything that can be saved on this Earth, but first and foremost – the memory of who we are and who we were. We must preserve it like embers under the ashes – in the catacombs or in the diaspora – and poets are indispensable for that.”
“So I will take part in those rescues?”
“No, not you. I have to tell you a sad secret: all our current activity in Mordor can’t really change anything. We have lost the most important battle in the history of Arda – the magic of the White Council and the Elves overcame the magic of the Nazgúl – and now the green shoots of reason and progress, bereft of our protection, will be weeded out throughout Middle Earth. The forces of magic will reconfigure this world to their liking, and henceforth it will have no room for technological civilizations like that of Mordor. The three- dimensional spiral of history will lose its vertical dimension and collapse into a closed circle; centuries and ages will pass, but the only things to change will be the names of the kings and the battles they win. As for Men… Men will remain pitiful deficient creatures who will not dare raise their eyes to look at the masters of the world – the Elves; it’s only in a changing world that a mortal can turn his curse into a blessing and rise above the Immortals through generational change. In two or three decades the Elves will turn Middle Earth into a well-tended tidy lawn, and Men into cute pets; they will deprive Man of a very small thing – his right to Create, and grant him a myriad of plain and simple pleasures instead… Actually, Haladdin, I can assure you that most people will make this trade without remorse.”
“’Most people’ don’t concern me, they can take care of themselves. So the Elves are our real enemies, rather than the Gondorians?”
“The Gondorians are victims just as you are, we’re not talking about them here. Strictly speaking, the Elves are not your enemies, either, not in the usual sense; can you call Man the enemy of deer? Certainly Man hunts deer – so what’s the big deal about that? He also guards them in royal forests, sings the majestic strength of the old buck, gets sentimental looking in does’ eyes, feeds an orphaned fawn from his hand… So the current cruelty of the Elves is a temporary measure; in a sense, it’s forced. When the world is static, they will for sure tread lighter; after all, the capability to Create is undoubtedly a deviation from the norm, so such people will be treated, rather than killed as they are now. Nor will the Immortals have to get their own hands dirty – there will be plenty of human volunteers… there already are… By the way, this future Elvish world will be pretty good in its own way – a stagnant pond is certainly less aesthetically pleasing than a stream, but it grows such wonderful water poppies…”