A rapping drew Varlik out of sleep, and he sat up abruptly. "Come in," he called. He got off the cot, wearing fatigues but barefoot. His alarm clock looked reproachfully at him. Apparently he'd forgotten to set it—a hell of a way to start. A corporal, husky and square-faced, stood in the short hallway looking in, and gestured at the rectangle of notepaper Varlik had taped to the door.
"Mr. Lormagen?"
"That's right. Come in. What's your name, corporal?"
"Duggan, sir."
"Sit down, Corporal Duggan." Varlik motioned to one of the two folding chairs. "What do your messmates call you?"
"Pat, sir. Short for Patros."
"Pat it is, then. Mine's Varlik."
Varlik pulled on his boots and pressed them snugly closed, snapped his recorder on his belt, slung his video camera under his left arm, slipped the band of his visor-like viewer over his head, then left with the corporal. The night felt strange to him, unreal, like one of the occasional dreams he had of being back in the army in some impossible situation or other. Outside, the air reminded him of a hot pool—all right for sitting in. The vehicle was an uncooled hovercar with the top and windows retracted. The corporal held the door for him.
Aside from their headlamps, almost the only lights in camp were at the few locations where work went on at night—motor pools, the hospital, and, of course, Army Headquarters. The perimeter, about a mile outside the encampment itself, was a barbed wire fence, tall and silent; outside that, accordion wire; and beneath the ground, string mines, no doubt. String mines, at least. A concrete and earth blockhouse stood by the steel-bar gate, which a guard opened for them while others no doubt watched from the blockhouse. Presumably there were other blockhouses at intervals around the camp.
Then they were out, accelerating across the prairie, the treated travelway giving way to the prairie's loose dry soil. A trail of dust rose with their passage. Here the way was only barely marked, as if a reaction dozer had scraped a minimal scalp across the grassland, careful to displace as little soil as possible—almost as if it had backed, dragging its blade behind. At intervals stood marker rods, slender, chest high, catching the headlight beams on reflective surfaces.
The air was still hot, the temperature surely well over a hundred, Varlik decided, and he wondered if the nights here were long enough to allow much cooling. The air that swirled about them seemed hotter, in a way, than it had in stillness outside the hut. But it wasn't really oppressive, not with the sun's fierce rays departed. A person could adapt to Kettle, he thought, at least at 52° north latitude.
"What do you think of the camp's defensive perimeter, Pat?" he asked. "Is it adequate? Or is it even necessary?"
Duggan answered without taking his eyes off the cone of their headlights. "You'd need to ask the general about that, sir, or one of his staff. But one thing you ought to be warned about—don't go trompin' around outside the fence. You're likely to lose a leg, all the way to your windpipe. And that's if someone don't shoot you first. The gooks on this part of the planet have been pacified for three hundred years, damn near, and from what I've heard, they've never been known to join together in anything. But it looks to me like the brass isn't taking anything for granted."
He drove in silence for a minute or so before saying anything more. "And we may not see them, but there's security patrols flying around over the country in light scouts, with scanners and ultra-aud. There's probably one of 'em readin' us right now. We give off a radio signal they recognize. No signal means 'investigate possible hostile.'
"And besides that, there's heavily armed recon floaters that go back and forth over the whole damn region, watching for anything like a mobilization or large movement of gooks. Just in case."
They had left the near-flat vicinity of camp for broadly rolling country, and the camp's few lights had disappeared behind the first gentle hill. What he was seeing now, Varlik realized, was the raw, native planet, marked only by this meager track and the cone of their headlights. Here, low rounded ridges ran almost north and south, and on their east-facing slopes, prairie gave way to savannah, its widely scattered, globular trees lurking darker in the night. Varlik wondered if large animals roved here, and whether any were inclined to attack people. Probably none could catch a hovercar if they tried.
The sky was innocent of city glow, stars myriad against and around the Milky Way's white swath. The present human sector was farther in toward the hub than mankind's earlier home, and the star display a bit richer, although Varlik knew nothing of that. He only knew it was beautiful. Scanning it for a recognizable constellation, he found none, and wasn't sure whether that reflected his sketchy knowledge of constellations or his displacement in space, or possibly the fact that he was in the middle northern latitudes here while Landfall was in the southern hemisphere at home.
His misgivings about the T'swa returned again, to mind and gut. He was on his way to meet them, to arrange to live with them, share a squad tent with some of them. A picture flashed in his mind, not for the first time, of large, black, hardbitten men who held life cheap. They were gambling, a fight broke out, knives flashed . . .
Maybe he'd end up with Colonel Voker after all.
And the T'swa would arrive in the middle of night. Captain Trevelos had said they would bivouac, which implied an unimproved area. When they got off the ship, would they have to dig latrines in the darkness and set up kitchens before they retired, besides erecting tents? Welcome to Kettle! They'd be in a great mood!
Or maybe they preferred it that way. Outside the Confederation worlds, and maybe some of the trade worlds, attitudes deviated a bit from Standard. And the T'swa were gooks—barbarians in uniforms, more or less. You couldn't know what they'd consider satisfactory.
After a while the mild hills gave way to an area almost as level as the military camp they'd left, and the hovercar slowed. "It's right about in here, sir," said Duggan. It was the first either of them had spoken for quite a few miles. "Hard to locate exactly in the dark. What we did was, we brought a reaction dozer out, and it sort of scalped a perimeter line around a big square so the ships can find it on the scanners at night. Or they can hang around up there till it gets light, or just set down blind by gravitic coordinates, I suppose; but if they tried that, they might miss the place, depending on how good their coordinates are set."
The corporal's speech was Iryalan instead of Romblit, his diction marking him back-country rural; a lot of soldiers were.
"Would it make any difference where they put down?" Varlik asked. "Couldn't they as well camp in one place as another, way out here?"
"Not very well. We drilled some water wells for 'em; they're going to need 'em when the sun gets up. They're really gonna need those water wells. I've heard their world is as hot as this one, but if they're human, they're gonna want lots of water."
He stopped, and they settled mentally to wait. "Pat," Varlik asked shortly, "what do you think of the Rombili?"
Duggan didn't answer at once, sitting back with one arm leaning on the top of the door. "The Rombili? They seem all right to me. They kind of screwed up the war, but it's easy to see how that would be; nobody had any idea that all those sweatbirds were running around loose down there, or that they had weapons or anything. I've talked to quite a few Rombili, and they're not much different from us."
"Sweatbirds. Is that what you call the gooks here?"
"Right. They got a funny build—long legs, big chest, and kind of skinny. All they need is a long neck and beak for catching fish, and they do have quite a nose. Longish necks, too."
"What do you think about T'swa mercenaries coming out here?"
"Seems good to me." He turned his face to Varlik, a brief reflection of starlight in one eye. "Let the T'swa fight the gooks. I hear they love wars; why not give 'em this one? I'd like to see two divisions of 'em, not just two regiments. Specially if they're as good as you hear."
Varlik watched the man remove something, a small package, from a pocket of his fatigue shirt, take something from it with his fingers, and put the something into his mouth. The spicy smell of nictos reached Varlik's nose. For a moment the corporal chewed, compacting the plug, then spat onto the prairie.
"Is that how most of the men feel about the T'swa? They wish there were two divisions?"
"Or a whole army." His eyes returned to Varlik. "We're not afraid of the gooks. Don't get me wrong. But they've got big jungles down south, hotter than a cookpot. I mean, it's bad up here, but it's supposed to be a lot worse at Beregesh. So there's this bunch of crazy sweatbirds down there, and it's gonna be bloody work doin' anything about 'em. If it wasn't for the technite, I'd say let 'em have the place. And we probably would, too."
He spat again and said nothing for half a minute. Then, "That's kind of what we're trying to do anyway, I guess. What General Lamons has in mind, accordin' to rumor. Just take back the country around the mines, fortify hell out of it, and let the gooks have the rest of the planet. Except for Aromanis.
"And stop usin' slaves. That's where the Rombili screwed up. If they'd have just started mining with mechanicals and contract workers, the gooks wouldn't have even known the Rombili were on the planet."
The corporal paused then, as if uncertain, and peered at Varlik in the starlight. "If I tell you somethin' private between the two of us, will you keep it that way?"
Lormagen extended his right hand. "I guarantee it." They gripped on the promise.
"My best buddy's a computerman, and he called up the staff briefing file on Kettle, to read it. The gooks never even lived where the mines are until the Rombili took slaves down there. And the first batch they took there, a lot of 'em died, because they made 'em work without cool suits. And the women they took down there, some of 'em died when they got pregnant. So the gooks that could take it lived, and the toughest got away to the jungles and had families there. And that's the strain we gotta fight."
He spat again, shrugging. "Not even a gook likes bein' a slave."
Varlik nodded, and the conversation died of contagious introversion and the night. They watched the sky and waited, and after a few minutes they didn't really watch any more, only sat with their faces aimed upward a little.
Then Varlik began to feel something, and his alertness sharpened. He became aware that his driver too had taken life. Carefully they scanned the sky, and realized that within the blackness was a different black, an area poorly defined that showed no stars, moving from what he thought was the east. As they strained to see into it, it grew, encroaching upon the Milky Way, slowly crossing it. Varlik didn't think to lower the visor-like camera monitor. With it down he could have peered beneath it to see normally or cast his glance upward a little to watch through the eye of his camera, which adjusted constantly to target illumination.
Abruptly the night was broken from above by a powerful beam of light that slid across the ground, passing near them, then made an angle nearby.
"Consar's royal balls!" Duggan swore. "I parked in their landing square! Must have missed the dozer scalp somehow; maybe there was a gap in it at the travelway." He laughed as he swung the car around and moved away. "All this empty prairie out here and I parked where they're supposed to put down." They hurried up a mild slope, Varlik with camera busy, then stopped again three hundred yards distant while the powerful light continued to trace a rectangle on the ground. Abruptly it went out, and gradually the vague blackness became a ship settling groundward, no lights showing.
Brief minutes later it rested on the prairie, its powerful lights flooding the area on one side. A second ship took shape above, and five minutes later it rested some hundred yards from the first. More lights brightened the area between the ships, while others flooded thinly a larger area beyond them. Squares opened in the hulls. Hundreds of uniformed men began to file from some of the smaller openings, moving on the double. Some trotted into the thinly lit area, while most formed ranks near the hulls.
Cargo movers floated out with boxes and duffle bags stacked beneath them, setting down their burdens along a line midway between the ships. Then they floated back through the gangways and out of sight for more. A long low pile of material took shape quickly. At one end of it, men were calling and gesturing, and from the ranked troops, squads quick-timed over to pick up gear and trot away with it.
Suddenly, from the darkness to one side of Varlik and Duggan, a voice spoke, seeming not more than a dozen yards away. "Hoy!" it said, quietly but firmly, a neutral, nonthreatening, but attention-taking sound. Varlik's and Duggan's eyes snapped in that direction but saw nothing. Nothing but night.
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" the voice asked. Its Standard was accented but easily understood.
Varlik's eyes checked the power light on the small recorder at his belt, then he answered in Tyspi. "I've come to speak with the T'swa. My name is Varlik Lormagen. I am from Iryala, and I am . . ." He had no word for journalist. "My job is to tell the people of the Confederation what T'swa warriors are like."
A ring of chuckles sounded softly all around them, and Varlik felt his hackles rise. Even on his bare forearms the hair stood up like tiny antennae. But there was no malice in the laughter. None whatever. Obviously he and Duggan had been spotted on scans from the ships, and a patrol had been sent to check them out.
"You are speaking with a T'swa warrior now," the voice said. "Our commanders are occupied. We will wait here."
This had been said in Tyspi also, and Varlik was surprised to find that the diction was as clear, the speech as easily understood, as the lesson recordings had been. He spoke now in Standard. "Is it all right to talk with you while we wait? If so, I would prefer to speak Standard just now. My driver doesn't know Tyspi, and it would be more courteous if we spoke so he can understand."
There were no more chucklings around them. "Standard will be satisfactory," the voice said in kind, and now, by starlight, Varlik could make out the T'swi as the man walked toward them, a little taller than himself, looking bulky and powerful. Holding the video camera in one hand, Varlik lowered the monitor with the other. In it he could see what the camera saw: dark face, large eyes, hawk nose, wide lipless mouth, and a helmet that seemed quite standard. About ten feet away the T'swi stopped. His sidearms were a holstered pistol and a short sword. He held a rifle ready in his hands.
The sword surprised Varlik. He'd assumed that the swords the T'swa carried in adventure stories had been the writers' creation. Swords were a primitive weapon, seen on gook worlds and perhaps on parts of some more primitive trade worlds. And while the T'swa were gooks, they were not supposed to be primitive in the military sense. Even Colonel Voker considered them superb troops.
Now that they were here, in front of him, Varlik had to grope for questions. "How many of you are there?" he asked.
"We are two regiments."
"About thirty-eight hundred men, then?"
"My regiment is the Red Scorpion Regiment. We recently finished a sporadically rather vicious war on Emor Gadny's World, and our numbers are reduced to 934 officers and men."
"In a regiment? You came straight here without refitting or replacing your casualties?"
"No. We refitted on Tyss, and spent two months enjoying our world and our people, healing our wounds and replacing such weapons as were worn out or lost. We do not replace casualties."
Didn't replace casualties! Varlik wondered if somehow he had misunderstood the T'swi. "How many were in your regiment when you went to—what world was that?"
"Emor Gadny's World. An interesting place—beautiful but difficult. We went there four years ago with about twelve hundred. Before that we were on Gwalsey, a dull war, and before that, Splenn. We went to Splenn a virgin regiment, with a full complement of 1,720 officers and men. That was more than fourteen years ago, Standard."
"But . . ." Varlik could not comprehend. They didn't replace their casualties! "How can you call yourself a regiment, then? How many did you say you have now?"
"Nine hundred and thirty-four effectives." The T'swi chuckled. "Abundantly effective effectives. And we will be the Red Scorpion Regiment until there are none of us left."
Varlik pursed his lips and whistled silently. This was something the fictionists hadn't mentioned, probably didn't know about. He imagined for a moment three scarred and gray-haired veterans charging an enemy—or slipping up on them in the dark, more likely.
"How long do you think it will be before you'll be in action? Do you have any idea?"
"It depends on the urgency of the situation. Normally, after landfall we spend two weeks in reconditioning, per contract. The opportunities for exercise are somewhat limited on a troopship, and our manner of combat requires physical excellence."
This guy, thought Varlik, talks like someone out of staff college, not like anyone who'd be sent out to lead a patrol. "What rank are you?" he asked.
"I am Sergeant Kusu. This is my squad."
"What's your education?"
"We have been educated as warriors of Tyss, by the Lodge of Kootosh-Lan."
Varlik glanced down at the recorder and camera. The tiny red glints reassured him; he wouldn't want to lose any of this. "The Lodge of Kootosh-Lan. I know very little about the T'swa. Does the name Kootosh-Lan have some special significance?"
"Kootosh-Lan founded the lodge, in the year 8,107 of our calendar. That was more than 14,000 of your Standard years ago."
Varlik tried carefully to see the black face more exactly, to read character and mood. If that is history instead of folklore, their recorded history is a lot older than ours. He decided to approach the matter indirectly—see if the story had mythic elements. "Was Kootosh-Lan a great warrior?"
A couple of chuckles were audible behind him. "Kootosh-Lan was no warrior at all. She was a teacher, the most renowned master in the history of Tyss. It was she who traced out and codified the Way of the Warrior, then established the first warrior lodge, that those who chose the Way of the Warrior could be properly prepared."
This Kusu, Varlik told himself, is a great interview. Answers everything directly with full pertinent details.
The sergeant's gaze had moved to the ships; Varlik's attention and camera followed. No longer did the cargo movers float in and out of the freight doors. Troops still picked up gear and carried it away. In the diffusely lit area on the far side was a lot of activity now; they were setting up camp there.
"One ship will leave soon," said Kusu.
"How soon?"
"A few minutes."
Incredibly quick. They probably drill disembarking, Varlik decided. "Will the other ship stay?"
"Briefly. While camp is being set up."
"Did the troops unload their own materials, or was that done by crewmen?"
"The ship's crew operates the cargo movers. The ship is T'swa, a troop carrier leased from your own world, and its crew is trained and experienced at unloading military material. They are to their jobs what we are to warring—expert. The Way of Jobs is not less an art than the Way of war. Are you familiar at all with the Ways?"
Varlik recalled vaguely the chart in the Exotic Philosophies entry. "Very slightly. I recall seeing a chart showing Ways of, uh, Work, and Fighting, and . . . Study was one. There were others." He wished he could read the T'swi's reactions. Then a movement caught his attention; one of the ships was lifting, and he thumbed the camera's trigger again. In little more than a minute it was lost to darkness. The other ship showed no sign of leaving; its floodlights still illuminated the bivouac area.
Sergeant Kusu interrupted Varlik's watching. "Follow me; I will take you to our colonel now."
Somehow it sounded more an order than suggestion. Kusu had probably been told to bring in whoever was waiting out here. "Okay?" Duggan asked. Varlik nodded. As the corporal activated the AG unit, the burly T'swi turned and trotted off down the slight slope toward the landing site. The others waited behind and to the sides until the vehicle began to follow Kusu, then moved along in its wake.
They drove right through the mustering area. Considerable material remained on the unloading site, unattended now. Two cargo movers were parked there, waiting to transfer more of it, perhaps to the kitchens when they were ready. In about two minutes, Duggan drew the car up to the regimental headquarters site, where already a considerable tent had been erected. A miniature ditch was still being dug around it, to catch and carry off the water from its roof in case of rain. There was a great deal of crisp and purposeful activity roundabout. Squad tents were being raised. These men knew what they were doing, and did it rapidly, with a modest amount of quiet, cheerful talk in Tyspi.
At the regimental headquarters Kusu reported, then introduced Varlik to Colonel Koda. Except for the patrol's black, the T'swa uniforms were a curiously, irregularly blotched green, Koda's included. In the monitor, the colonel looked no older than the sergeant and carried much the same belt gear. Only the shoulder insignia were different. They were standard—cloth wings versus the sergeant's sewn-on patch with the initial T.7 Colonel Koda examined the Iryalan for a brief moment, then spoke in Standard with a slight accent that was mostly a matter of precise diction.
"Varlik Lormagen." He said it as if tasting the name; his eyes were alert, direct but unthreatening. "And you want to tell your people about T'swa warriors. Very well, you can report to—Lieutenant Zimsu of the First Platoon, Company A, in the morning. He will expect you. You can accompany the platoon in its daily routine and observe T'swa warriors to your fill." Then he spoke briefly to his aide in Tyspi before turning again to Varlik.
"Thank you, colonel," Varlik said. To his surprise, the T'swa colonel flashed a quick grin.
"You are welcome," the colonel replied, then dismissed him unmistakably, simply by removing his attention totally.
Unaccompanied now, ignored, Varlik and Duggan climbed into their vehicle and drove away, picking a careful route through the encampment. Hovercars do not ride an air cushion; they operate on the same gravitic principle as floaters. But as hover vehicles are functionally limited to near contact with massive bodies, the turbulence of rapid passage can raise dust. Duggan's caution among the tents avoided this. Even so, he cleared the area quickly enough, and swung around in an arc that would find the marker rods.
Once more on the track, they started back for the Confederation military base, not speaking till they topped the first low hill. Then Duggan swung the vehicle around and stopped for a last look. At almost the moment they stopped, the floodlamps of the ship flicked off, leaving the plain in darkness. There were not even the white sparks of handlamps.
"What do you think of them, Pat?" Varlik asked.
"The T'swa? First-rate soldiers. They set that place up quicker than I ever would have thought. And that patrol! Whoosh! They could have shot us before we ever knew they were around; could have slit our throats, as far as that's concerned." Duggan shook his head in wonder. "They're good, all right. Better'n good."
He paused. "You coming to see 'em again tomorrow?"
"Right."
"Going to stay with 'em while you're here?"
Varlik's misgivings were gone, leaving only a light unease in its stead. The T'swa had seemed both civilized and intriguing, unlike anything his imagination had conjured up.
"You can bet on it," he said.
Duggan nodded as if approving, then swung the car around and started back toward the base. They hardly said anything all the way there.