The evening of Winter Solstice was clear and still, moonless and moderately cold, but inside the main building were warmth, light, and noise. Most of the benches had been removed from the big assembly hall, stacked in an adjacent storeroom. Scattered tables, surrounded by slowly eddying trainees and T'swa, held food in quantity, delicacies, mostly prepared by the regiment's cooks but partly flown in. Here and there, mingling with the military, were young civilians about the age of the trainees—the Ostrak people—and army personnel on detached service there.
"You were right," Esenrok was saying to Jerym. "No liquor. I suppose they were worried about the guys that haven't been defused yet, getting drunk."
Jerym chuckled. "I'm pretty sure they weren't worried about the T'swa. I wonder what a T'swa would be like, drunk."
"Huh! I can't imagine one ever getting that way. But if one did, I suppose he'd be as mild as if he were sober. Just not as well coordinated."
"Yeah, I expect you're . . ." Jerym stopped. A slim, red-haired girl had walked up to him on his right, looking at him; he turned and stared.
"Lotta!"
"Hello, Jerym. You've changed. And grown."
He reached out unbelievingly, and they held each others' hands between them. "It's been a year last Harvest Festival," he said. Then, "What are you doing here?"
"I'm an interviewer."
"An inter. . . . You must be one of the new ones."
"Nope. I've been here for three weeks, working seven days a week from eight in the morning till 21 or 2200 in the evening—more than half around the clock. Otherwise I'd have looked you up."
He stared, then recovered and turned to Esenrok, who stood watching and curious. "Esenrok, this is my sister, Lotta. She's— Well, you know as much about that as I do. Lotta, this is a buddy of mine, Esenrok. Eldren Esenrok, isn't it?"
"You've got it." The blond trainee and the red-haired girl saluted each other formally, but grinning, hands raised to the sides, shoulders high, palms forward. "Jerym never told me he had a good-looking sister."
"I do though," Jerym said. "And right now I've got first claim on her time. We've got some catching up to do."
Esenrok shook his head. "And I thought we were friends. Ah well. Glad to meet you, Lotta."
Jerym led her away toward a bench that had been left down, then spotted someone and steered her off in that direction. "There's someone else I want you to meet," he murmured to her. "I showed him one of your letters, and he said he wanted to write to you. But he never did. Too shy."
Romlar's back was to them. He turned at Jerym's touch. "Hi, Alsnor. Oh! Hi, Lotta! I see you found him."
"Hi, Artus. Yes, he brought me over to introduce us."
Jerym's jaw had dropped, then he turned to Lotta. "You interviewed Romlar?"
"That's right. We're good friends."
Jerym looked from one to the other. "Well, then, let's you and I go sit somewhere and talk. You two have had hours to talk lately!"
"Go ahead," Romlar said. "But, Lotta, when you're done, I want a chance to ask you some questions. So far it's been all one way."
"Sure," she said, then left with her brother, stepping into the corridor to escape interruptions.
"I guess you know Medreth," Jerym said. "My interviewer."
"Medreth was yours? We've been at Lake Loreen together since she was eight and I was six."
"You guys don't—" Jerym's grin was lopsided. "No, I guess you wouldn't. Share confidences about interviews."
Lotta laughed. "Wellem would skin us alive if we did. No, it's never done."
"When you're at home, why haven't you ever done for Mom and Dad what you guys have done for us?"
Her eyebrows rose. "Consider the questions," she said, "the kinds of questions we ask, the things we ask you to do. Can you picture Dad or Mom sitting still for them? Especially from one of their kids!"
He laughed, imagining.
"Actually I have done some," she said, "in a sneaky way. Nothing ambitious, nothing formal, but it helps."
They talked, about home, parents, life in the regiment, for about twenty minutes before Voker's voice overrode the lively hubub of hundreds of conversations. "At ease, men! At ease!" The noise level dropped abruptly. "At ease and face the podium!"
The brother and sister stepped inside to watch and listen. Then His Majesty, Marcus XXVIII, strode out from the wings without the customary fanfare and attendants, a tall, lean, vigorous man of sixty-seven in a white dress uniform. The final murmurs of conversation stilled instantly. The trainees hardly noticed the man a step behind His Majesty on his right.
The king stopped just back from the podium's front edge and looked the silent audience over. "Good evening, gentlemen!" he boomed, without electronic augmentation, and they responded instantly, almost in unison, as if drilled in it.
"Good evening, Your Majesty!"
He waited three or four seconds, then continued. "I had several other invitations for this evening. The most tempting was to spend it with my grandchildren. But I understand you don't have too many evenings off, so I decided to take this opportunity to see you instead."
There were a few tentative hurrahs that grew into somewhat ragged, audience-wide cheering. The trainees were in a state of low-grade shock.
"You men, you trainees, are a first in the Confederation—a regiment of warriors. You will not be the last such regiment, but you are the trailbreakers. It has not been easy for you, in more ways than one, but you are proceeding very well, and as you continue, you will do better and better."
He paused, once more scanned them deliberately, then boomed again: "What do you think of your T'swa cadre?"
The question released them from their awed bemusement, and they began cheering at the top of their lungs, the cheer shifting gradually to a chant of "T'swa, T'swa, T'swa!" This went on for the better part of a minute, until Voker's voice came over the loudspeakers: "That's it, men. At ease." The chant stumbled and stopped. "Thank you," Voker said.
"And now—" His Majesty went on, "now I want to introduce someone to you—the man who first proposed we form such a regiment." He half-turned to the man who'd followed him onto the podium, and gestured at him with a white-gloved hand. "The man who told people what the T'swa truly were like, the man who was called 'the White T'swi,' Sir Varlik Lormagen."
Again the crowd erupted with sound as a grinning Lormagen stepped up beside the king. After half a minute, Lormagen raised his hands overhead, so that the cheers faded. He too was a man in his sixties, taller than average and husky, recognizably the same man they'd seen on the old cubes from the Kettle War. When they were quiet enough, Lormagen spoke, using a microphone clipped to his collar.
"I want to tell you just one thing," he said. "I'm proud of you, every last one of you."
Again they cheered. Voker might have interrupted them, but the king looked toward him as if anticipating that, and still grinning, shook his head, then waved to his audience and left the podium with Lormagen. Cheers followed them into the wings and out of sight.
After that the crowd began to eddy again around the tables, bemused at first. But soon their conversations were even livelier than before.
When the cheering was over, Pitter Mellis worked his way to a door and walked down the corridor to a latrine. It was crowded, the commodes occupied, the urinal lined with men, with others waiting. He turned and left, going to an exit and out into the cold. It was only 200 yards to the barracks; jogging would be better than waiting.
No one was at the barracks when he got there, and he went quickly to the latrine, seating himself on a commode. After a minute he heard the barracks door open, heard footsteps coming his way, several sets of them. Others, he thought, had gotten the same idea he had.
But the men that peered in at him were strangers.
"What are you guys doing in this barracks?" he demanded.
They looked at Mellis, then at each other, and came into the latrine, two, and then four more. When he started to get up, reaching to pull up his pants, they rushed him, grabbed him. He opened his mouth to yell, and a hard blow to the gut drove the wind out of him. One arm was free, and he swung it wildly, cursing. Someone hit him hard on the nose, breaking it, another slugged him in the kidneys. His head snapped back at that, so that a blow at his chin struck his throat instead. Then, pants around his ankles, he was dragged bleeding and choking through the barracks. At the door their leader stopped them, measured his victim and hit him a heavy blow to the point of the chin, slamming Mellis backward off the stoop, unconscious. They left him lying there in the snow.
After the king had left the podium and the cheering had stopped, Lotta promised Jerym to see him again when she had a chance, and began to circulate, talking with other trainees. Jerym headed for a table, where he put hors d'oeu'vres of several kinds on a plate. A moment later he spotted Romlar again and worked his way to him.
"So you know my sister."
"Yep."
"How'd you know she was my sister? By the name?"
"I didn't know her last name. At first, to me, she was just a girl named Lotta. But the last interview I got, it came to me: 'This is the Lotta that's Alsnor's sister.' So I asked her, and she said she was.
"But she asked me not to say anything. She said she'd surprise you at Solstice.
"You know," he added, "the King made us out pretty special, and maybe we are. But without the T'swa training us, we'd be nothing, and what those interviewers are doing is as important to this regiment as the T'swa are. We need the training, but we need the Ostrak Project just as much."
Jerym nodded, thinking that the changes in Romlar might be bigger than anyone else's in the platoon. And Lotta had been Romlar's interviewer.
Esenrok, with one of the hot, non-alcoholic drinks in his hand, saw Sergeant Dao standing beside the main entrance to the assembly hall, and went over to him. "What do you think of that?" Esenrok said. "The king came to see us." He peered at the big black man curiously. "Does the king know the T'sel, do you suppose?"
"I have heard that he does. And perceiving him as I did, I am sure of it."
Perceiving him as you did. Esenrok wondered what the T'swa might perceive that he didn't. "How old are you T'swa when you get the Ostrak Procedures?"
"We do not get the Ostrak Procedures. They are something originated on Iryala, I believe, for persons who did not grow up with the T'sel in a T'sel environment. "He gazed at Esenrok for a moment before continuing. "It was a man named Ostrak who brought knowledge of the T'sel to Iryala, you know."
Esenrok hadn't known, and it occurred to him to wonder why. He was about to ask Dao—the sergeant knew so much else, he might know the answer to that too—when a hoarse croak interrupted them from behind, from the door they stood beside. He turned and stared; Dao reached and grabbed the form there as it teetered.
"Mellis!" Esenrok said, staring. "What in Tunis happened to you?" Mellis's cheeks, nose, and ears were waxy gray from frostbite. Blood smeared his lower face and shirt, frozen blood granulated with snow.
Others nearby, having heard Esenrok's exclamation, were turning to look.
"They trashed the barracks." Mellis barely mumbled it; his jaw didn't move.
"Bahn!" Dao bellowed. "Here!"
The crowd nearby began to form a vortex through which Bahn pushed from not far off. "Take Mellis to the infirmary," Dao called to him, then started off himself with Esenrok at his heels. A few others followed till Dao told them to go back.
The barracks was a mess. Mattresses and bedding were on the floor, slashed and torn. In the latrine, washrags had been flushed, and the overflowing commodes had flooded the place. Windows had been broken. Glow panels, dislodged from the ceiling, lay trampled and bent. Esenrok felt rage begin to swell, then saw Dao's calm, and felt the rage ebb.
First Platoon, occurred to Esenrok; it was the 1st on whose barracks he'd led the raid that first night. But he rejected the thought immediately. First platoon had been interviewed too, most or all of it; it wouldn't have been them.
These thoughts flashed while he followed Dao, striding back through the barracks and onto the stoop, where the big T'swi looked around. The latest snow had been a week earlier, and was trampled beyond tracking. Beside the stoop, it was stained red where Mellis had lain bleeding. Dao stood unmoving for a moment, frowning, lips pursed, then started for the main building at a lope, Esenrok close behind.
Within five minutes, groups of T'swa were fanning through the compound. Two barracks and several T'swa cabins had been vandalized. Six men were busy vandalizing another barracks. They'd left two sentries outside. These yelled, then fled at the T'swa's approach. Two T'swa peeled off in pursuit, and surprisingly ran them down.
The culprits were manhandled off to the main building, into the assembly hall, and up front. The regiment had been formed up as units, and stood waiting. The Ostrak teams and army service personnel stood curious in the rear of the room. Voker and Dak-So stood at the front of the podium, with the king and Lormagen to one side, observing, faces unreadable.
Mounting the podium, Dao reported quietly to Voker and Dak-So. Bahn had already reported on Mellis's condition: A broken nose, bruised larynx, dislocated jaw, concussion, frostbite. And hypothermia; it was surprising and fortunate that he'd regained consciousness.
Voker questioned the six captives then. They denied knowing anything about Mellis. While they were denying it, some T'swa frog-marched four more captives in. Sergeant Major Kuto informed Voker that all ten were from 3rd Platoon, F Company. And that only four regimental personnel remained unaccounted for, also from 3rd Platoon, F Company. He'd hardly said it when two more culprits were brought in, one unconscious across a T'swa shoulder.
Voker gazed coldly down at the second group of captives. "Trainee Mellis is in the infirmary," he said, "with multiple injuries, hypothermia, and frost bite. Who did it?"
One of the second group straightened and looked up at the colonel with glittering eyes. "Sir, we did! We couldn't let him spread an alarm."
Voker's gaze turned thoughtful. "I see. What is your name?"
"Trainee Jillard Brossling, sir!"
"Brossling." Voker seemed to taste the name. "And why did you vandalize barracks, Brossling?"
"Sir! This was our opportunity. Everyone—almost everyone—was here in the main building."
"Ah. And why did you wish to vandalize barracks at all?"
"Sir! It was something warriorlike to do. And we chose platoons the T'swa favored—their pet dog platoons!"
"Mmm." Voker turned to Sergeant Major Kuto. "Sergeant major," he said mildly, "have the criminals, under T'swa guard, erect a squad tent to live in. Have them do it barefoot, so they won't take too long. The rest of 3rd Platoon, F Company, will erect a barbed wire enclosure on X-posts around the tent. When the tent has been erected, the criminals will be given their boots and sleeping bags and will sleep in the tent on the ground, manacled. The rest of 3rd Platoon, F Company, will stand sentry shifts around the fence. Between sentry shifts, the remaining members of 3rd Platoon will also repair and clean up the vandalized huts and barracks tonight. The building engineers will supervise the work and see that 3rd Platoon has the materials for the job.
"The platoons which were vandalized will occupy 3rd Platoon's barracks tonight, and the overflow will move into other F Company barracks. While there, they will carefully abstain from doing any damage whatever."
He turned his gaze back to the culprits. "We'll decide in the morning what to do with you. But know now that you will be required to make up the damage, make heavy amends, and petition the rest of the regiment to be accepted back into it when the amends have been satisfactorily completed. You are responsible for what you did, and it is a responsibility you cannot avoid. If we send you to Ballibud, it will not be before you have met that responsibility."