She said in shock, "What the hell does he think he's doing?"
Phaethon said softly, "The same thing Mars did to Vulcan in the myth. He's trying to steal my bride."
She looked at Phaethon in amazement. "And you're just sitting here? Haven't you done something? He's about to sabotage the expedition!"
"He has no chance of success. The weapon I intend to use against the Nothing Machine will also work against him. Watch."
"Very well. Do it."
The knife replied, "Sir, please record the order in writing, before I carry it out"
"What-?"
"Any subordinate may request an order be given in writing, and a true copy recorded and notarized under seal, in circumstances such as these, sir. Please see the Received Universal Code of Military Procedure Systems and Program Manual at-" and it recited a section and code number.
Atkins understood. The only time, really, a subordinate would ask for a notarized copy of an order would be to preserve a copy as evidence for an Inquest hearing. No subordinate would dare to make that request if the order were lawful.
Atkins had, after all, been directly ordered by Prime Minister Kshatrimanyu Han, his commander-in-chief, to cooperate with Phaethon, not to sabotage him.
He said, "You think I'm afraid of a court-martial, is that it? Don't make me laugh."
"Sir, is the Marshal-General asking me to speculate about the Marshal-General's state of mind, sir?"
"Well, I am not going to sit here and fret about my career (ha! if you can call it a career) while an idealistic fool is planning to give the enemy control of the only invulnerable warship in the Oecumene. Don't you think I'm willing to sacrifice my career to do what I know is right?"
"Sir, is the Marshal-General asking me to estimate the Marshal-General's ability to distinguish proper from improper conduct, or to comment upon the Marshal-General's bravery, Sir? I do not think the Marshal-General is afraid of a court-martial in and of itself, sir."
" 'In and of itself ? What the hell does that mean?"
But he knew what it meant. A court-martial as such did not awe him. But what the court-martial represented, did. It represented a human attempt to enforce and to protect those values for which soldiers lived and died: honor, courage, fortitude, obedience.
He looked at the dagger in his hand. In the pommel was imprinted the insignia of the Foederal Oecumenical Commonwealth: a sword bound into its sheath by the windings of an olive wreath. Within the circle of that wreath, a watchful eye. The motto: Semper Vigilantes. Eternal Vigilance.
The eye seemed to stare back at him remorselessly. Honor. Courage. Fortitude. Obedience.
He said aloud, "I was born in the drylands, back when Mars was still red, on the slope of Olympus Mons, and my father was killed by a warren breaker who drilled into our run for our ice. My father's two clones were my uncles, and twins. They all used the same passes and prints, because Mars, in those days, was controlled by the fiefs, who would rather be safe than be free, and they metered our water, and IQ and air, and they tried to keep track of everyone, everywhere. But we were Icemen. We lived by the pump and the pike. And we didn't bother to obey any regs we didn't like. The fiefs were Logicians, what we now call Invariants, but we just called them the Un-dead.
"The plan was that Uncle Kassad would lie down in the coffin they sent for my dad, and take a retarder, and pass himself off for dead, till he got out of monitor range in the grave stream. Then he would wake up, dissolve his way to the surface, and set off south after the warren breaker. He had his filter pike with him, folded on his chest like a spear, which he was going to use to pierce the breaker's dry suit to pump out his blood and filter the moisture, till he got a volume equal to what we had lost from our ice.
"The Sophotechs, way back then, we all thought they were gods, and no one understood them, or tried. But I was studying for a wardenship, and was a cadet, and I believed what the Sophotechs preached, so I told my uncle that he was wrong. Wrong, because the breaker came from the garden belt the Irenic Composition controlled; wrong, because the breaker probably wasn't aware of what he had done; it wasn't a man, just a part of a mass-mind, a cog in a mob. Wrong, because the Undead police had already ruled the death an accident, and paid the insurance.
'He showed me his pike, and pointed the field spike at my eye, so I could see down the bore to the extraction cell. And I sweated (even though sweat was a waste under our water laws) because I knew how quickly, if he touched the trigger, the field could suck op the moisture in the tissues of my eye, my veins, my brains. I was looking right at death.
"And Uncle Kassad, he told me that this was where right and wrong came from. It came from a weapon's mouth.
"Then he turned off his heart and lay down. And Uncle Kassim opened the floor, and we lowered Uncle Kassad to the sewage to drown.
"We only got one cast from him later, a silent picture of him in his suit, emerging safe from the disassembler pools, and heading off overland, south.
"Later, we got the liters of water, the death payment, sent by post. It was the moisture from the body of the one who had killed my father. But it was sent by the Irenic Composition, our enemies. After Kassad killed their breaker, they took and embraced him, and drained his mind into theirs.
"My half-sister once, years later, after the Commonwealth consolidations, said she saw a body which looked like my uncle, tending a tree in the plantations down south. She said he looked happy. But I never went to look.
"Maybe the Irenic Composition, back when it was still intact, thought it was as right, as justified, as Uncle Kassad thought he was, and repaid the murder of one of their human units by turning him into one, and forcing a life of hopeless bliss on him. But I never went to ask.
"But I learned, back then, that there was no such thing as right or wrong, not that anyone could agree upon; or if there was, it did not make a damn bit of difference, if someone did not have the might or wit or luck to make right things go right. My uncle Kassad told me. Right and wrong come from the mouth of a weapon."
The weapon Atkins carried spoke, and it said, "Sir? Permission to speak frankly?"
"Granted."
"If your uncle had been right to say that might makes right, then the mere fact that his enemy was stronger, by his own theory, makes him wrong. Is this what the Marshal-General believes? That there is no reason for duty, honor, obedience? No reason to live a life such as that which the Marshal-General has led?"
Atkins frowned.
After what was a short time, but which seemed very long to him, he softly said, "Very well. Belay that last order. Stand down."
And he returned the dagger, asleep, to its sheath.
Phaethon, with a gesture, banished the image off the mirror, and commanding one of his crew mannequins, said, "Drake, please go see Marshal Atkins, give him my compliments, and escort him off my ship before he commits any mischief."
Daphne was gazing at Phaethon in mingled speech-lessness, impatience, amusement, and outrage. She demanded, "Were you actually going to sit here on your lump and just watch him sabotage your ship? What if you had guessed wrong about him?!"
"A good engineer always has a backup plan."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning that I would not care to cross swords with Marshal Atkins on any field of combat, land, space, sea, dream, or air, except here. Any other place, he would have such weapons and such advantages that anyone would be helpless. Except here. Aboard my ship, I'm in my element. I built this place. I control what happens here. That's why he did not know I was spying on him."
"And what would you have done?"
He smiled expansively. "The stealth remotes are a fascinating piece of technology. Each one has an artificial molecule in its inertial navigation system, completely shielded from the outside, which registers movement by electron shell displacement in the surface atoms. The shielding normally protects it from tampering. Because, normally, there is no ghost-particle array system in place to teleport electrons through the base vacuum directly into the heart of the little machines and disable them."