* * *
The Division was relieved in place a week later to get some rest. On the third day, General Kabrell came down to Captain Tensher's company area, and within a few minutes, a summons brought Lieutenant Dvenitch into the dayroom of the break tent. Captain Tensher and the general were sitting relaxed at the center table.
"Well done, Donal," said General Kabrell, shaking hands. "You keep it up, and you'll be making Captain in three or four years."
"Thanks, sir," said Dvenitch. Captain Tensher smiled wryly.
"So we know how they've been evading detection," said Kabrell.
"How?" said Dvenitch.
"One of our own rejected systems. The experts pieced it together pretty quickly when they saw it: it's called wavelength-sensitive counter-Doppler conversion. It can make air and spacecraft nearly invisible to narrow bandwidth electronic surveillance; it actually processes and rebroadcasts probes to fool the operator. The Goonies can do company-size vehicles at this stage. Later they'll get it up to battalion-size, if we don't kick their butts first."
Captain Tensher spoke. "Did you say it was one of our own systems, sir?
"Yes. A certain Member Boormin, Chairman of the Bloo Sessions Armed Forces Appropriations Committee, called the project, among others, an exorbitant boondoggle and had it canned. The theory is rarefied; the application's expensive. Falmuth got wind of it - they read the Bloo Sessions Debates with their tongues out, as you can imagine - and went after it.
"And probably, one of the physicists involved, rather than passively watch his years of work go down the sewer, sold his results to them. The spooks will soon find out who he is and make him regret the day he was born."
"So what do we do now, sir?" said Captain Tensher.
"Something called randomly variable wavelength probes. We can used special algorithms to keep ahead of the processors on the vehicles. We didn't throw our lab notebooks away, and we have some fast approaches to algorithm development. We'll be getting field prototypes in a couple of months. Meanwhile, the Goonies think we've already got 'em, because of the lost Apparition, so we can expect a little break in sudden interventions, and casualties nearer to zero, while they regroup."
As the General spoke, one of those rare, almost mystic coincidences that occur in both notable history and ordinary private lives, began to unfold. Dvenitch was looking idly out of the dayroom window at a nine-man work-detail from the Stockade when, with an eerie tickling sensation between his ribs and up the sides of his face, he recognized one of the prisoners. He gaped for a moment.
"Sir!" he blurted.
"Yes, Lieutenant?" said Kabrell.
"Look out there. That prisoner! Third from the left."
Kabrell looked. "What about him?"
"Let me get him in here, sir. You'll see."
"All right, bring him."
Dvenitch strode out to the entry vestibule and sent the NCO of the Day, Sergeant Banner, out to get the man. As the three officers watched, Banner spoke to the corporal in command of the detail. The corporal nodded, spoke to one of the prisoners, and cocked a thumb at the dayroom. After a short, insolent pause, the prisoner laid down his shovel, thrust his hands into his pockets, and sauntered toward the dayroom in company with Sergeant Banner.
A brisk rap sounded at the door. Dvenitch said, "Come on in."
Banner ushered the prisoner into the room, got a nod from Dvenitch, and withdrew. The prisoner looked suspiciously at the three officers.
"What do you guys want?" he said.
"Good morning," said Dvenitch. "Do you recognize me?"
"Yeah. You're the lieutenant with the Data Handler. What do you want?"
"General Kabrell," said Dvenitch. "Captain Tensher, this is Shomakk Laggney, the man who introduced fixed-wing aircraft into the Daush Contingency Plan."
General Kabrell laughed. "The very man?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you know what you've done, Laggney?" asked the General.
"No," said Laggney, leery as a cat that has been teased too often.
"Well, sit down and listen. It's . . ."
"I'd rather stand."
"Suit yourself." The General described the capture of the Apparition and the events leading up to it. Laggney's reaction was nothing more than a slight softening of expression. He had nothing to say.
Dvenitch sighed. "So how'd you end up in the Forces? I thought you were one of Boormin's Brighties."
"I was," said Laggney.
"Well?"
Laggney shrugged. "You know what that program was all about?" he asked.
"Not really," said Dvenitch. "All I got was an agenda, instructions to cooperate, and emphatic orders to ignore all insults."
Laggney shrugged. "It was called Creative Decisions. The theory was, since regular officers are too rigid and stupid, according to Boormin and his Committee, students that had shown the ability to think creatively would be invited into Forces research programs. We'd critique them and be called up as consultants in time of war. It was kind of fun at first, but when real fighting started, most of the kids weren't so interested."
"Why not?" said Captain Tensher.
Laggney shrugged again. "Who knew how long it might go on? It might turn out to be a real pain, and what if you made a wrong call and got somebody killed? What could be done to you? Most of us changed majors, claimed key occupational training, and got exemptions. The program kind of died. My mistake was breaking up with that Seela Boormin. I don't think she liked the way I did it."
"Seela Boormin!" Dvenitch's eyes widened. "Is she related to Member Boormin? The name's so common, so I never thought of a connection."
"She's his granddaughter. She's the one that got me into the Creative Decisions program."
Understanding dawned. "So when you dumped her, she was so mad she got you drafted?" Dvenitch was incredulous.
"Using an old emergency reg. Yeah," said Laggney. "Her grandfather's pretty important with the Armed Forces."
Kabrell snorted. "He's important, all right. How'd you manage to get into the Stockade?"
"Some cretin told me to do something stupid. I told him where to get off."
Kabrell's expression did not change. "Do you like the Stockade?"
"No."
"How would you like a release from it, transfer to another Brigade, and a twenty thousand Blooven bounty for helping to capture that Apparition?"
Laggney's wall was breached at last. He blinked in shock. Then he shook his head. "Release from the Stockade, yes; transfer out of A-Brigade, I don't care. Twenty thousand Blooven, no."
"No?" said Kabrell.
"No. It was the Lieutenant that spotted how to use it; I was just screwing around. I'm glad it saved lives, if it did, but it would be stupid to pay me for it."
"You don't like doing stupid things, do you?"
"No. Give it to the Lieutenant. That wouldn't be stupid."
"That sort of award is against regs for officers."
Laggney shrugged. "Don't, then."
Kabrell had had enough. "The proposal stands," he snapped. "Take it or go pick up your shovel."
Bulges moved along Laggney's muscular jaw. "All right, I'll take it."
Kabrell was far from mollified. "Have you learned anything at all from your time in the Stockade?"
"Yeah. Keep your mouth shut and don't think."
The General's mouth-corners twitched. "Forget the stereotypes, or you'll land right back where luck's about to pull you out. I'll help someone as surly as you are just once."
Laggney said nothing.
"The point: in the Stockade, you're already disrated: promoted to civilian; forgetting courtesy doesn't cost you a thing. When you join your new unit, you'll be a private again. You'll have to use the word 'sir' with officers and 'sergeant' with noncoms. Can you do it?"
Laggney was silent, apparently in thought. Looking in puzzlement at his sullen face, Dvenitch, a plain Forces brat, realized something that had not registered before: to Laggney, sa
ying 'sir' was not a courtesy but a disparagement of himself. The thousand details of respect, protocol and just plain manners among soldiers: the rough, almost cruel kidding between junior officers; the unfailing use of rank before family name by officers of every grade when talking to any enlisted man; the stylized greetings and regards exchanged at all times, in all places, with very special exceptions. Despite exposure and intelligence, Laggney had remained utterly ignorant of it. Years would pass before he understood even something as basic as 'sir', and he would be out of the Forces long before then. Dvenitch stared at him in sympathy and astonishment.
Laggney finally said, "Yeah."
# # #
About the Author:
Mark T. Skarstedt spent his childhood and undergraduate years in California. After graduation from UCLA with a B.Sc. in chemistry, he joined the army as an infantry lieutenant, and while serving as a platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division in Viet Nam, was twice decorated for valor, once by the U.S. Army, and once by the South Vietnamese government (which insisted on using the word 'gallantry' rather than 'valor' in its citation). He also received the purple heart, having unfortunately been trapped by a booby-trap, which would seem to make him a booby. Sorry about that.
Upon returning home, he earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry (cellular and molecular biology) and, as an unrepentant Viet Nam veteran and fan of the hard-fighting South Vietnamese people, was probably the most unpopular graduate student in the Western Hemisphere. He followed up with a pair of two-year post-doctoral fellowships, one at Imperial College in London (H.G. Wells's old alma mater), and one at the State University of New York in Brooklyn. He then took up a research career in the medical