What about mutiny? At first sight this disgraceful mutiny thing seemed to disqualify, Clandeboye completely from a sensitive mission. But the more Fry investigated the inquest, the more fascinated he became. Men are loyal to an officer for a reason. The inquest had not found out why. Clandeboye might carry the psychological nature of a mutineer-a man who always thought he was being put upon-but none of the men who sided with him even remotely fitted that profile. There were other aberrations. It was highly irregular that the inquest had come to the conclusion of mutiny, had placed that in the major’s record-and then refused to prosecute him. Here was a rich arsenal of weapons available to Fry, stacked both against Clandeboye and his enemies. It was a situation that could be worked both ways.
What particularly attracted Fry was his candidate’s brilliance under fire. The man could improvise against the kzinti faster than a computer. That was rare. There was no record at all of Shimmel’s brilliance.
When all items in the major’s record were weighed against Lucas Fry’s purpose, the fisticuff fight was the blackest mark against Clandeboye. These fights had become too common of late, as if young soldiers had taken out-of-control kzinti kits as their role models. Why admire the ferocity of the enemy you had just defeated? Modern youth was becoming incomprehensible. Human males of Fry’s generation, even as children, had not settled their differences by physical combat. In space, with a vacuum on the other side of the bulkhead, such behavior was deadly. It seemed that war had been short-circuiting the morals of the young; fist makes right, it told them. So Clandeboye liked to fight, did he? Well, he could, and would, be nailed to the rack and stretched for that one.
To Lucas Fry it was self-evident that the ability to clobber someone did not make one right. If men had destroyed the kzinti war machine, that was a matter of survival, not of rightness. Fry had gone into the war as an adult, already knowing that. But the younger men and women had seen the war won by force and not by philosophy. They did not have the long view of history Force seemed dominant to them; they had been born into it.
How does one pass one’s wisdom on to the children? (To men as mature as Fry, 66, men as young as Clandeboye, 47, were still children.)
His parents, he reflected, had been horrified when he left the goldskins for the military. They had tried to teach him that the kzin could be handled nonviolently. They had implored him to study man’s history to understand where violence led. He had ignored them. Now he had his own wisdom to teach-force must be balanced with compassion. But he had no children of his own to listen.
They had been killed in the war. He had only his cadre of young officers.
He wasn’t going to let Clandeboye’s temper disqualify him. A man’s weaknesses could be turned to advantage. Weakness was non-Medusan-if a man could look at weakness directly, he became strong; if he dared look at his failings only obliquely through a mirror, he became ossified. Fry was sure enough of his role as a martinet to believe that he could teach the sons of Zeus and Danae to face their Medusas without a mirror.
The heavy bulkhead door swung in, enough to let the sergeant’s head through. “We found away down past the kitchens. I didn’t let your boy get lost”
In person, Major Yankee Clandeboye turned out to be a rumpled flatlander who had a flatlander’s unbalanced way of giving a snappy salute in freefall. He was slightly awkward and ill-at-ease. He did not have the charisma of a commanding officer. He had too much hair; it even covered his ears. No matter-one did not judge flatlanders by their size, color of skin, grace, or cleanliness. They had other virtues.
“You’ll be wondering why I hauled you in from Egeria. Convince me that you are the right man for my mission and I have a high enough priority rating to get your transferal processed immediately. We’re in Intelligence here; I suspect you already know that.”
“Sir, I’m happy in Training,” drawled Yankee with a quizzical grin.
Fry appraised his recruit. This Yankee was going to be a man who sniffed his soup before he drank it “A negotiator, are you? Why would you be happy in Training, for Finagle’s sake?”
“I don’t see a more important job than training elite fighters. With all due respect to ARM, sir, I think we did a very sloppy job in the war. We won more by wild good luck than with steady competence. Chuut-Riit was assassinated-Buford’s what-the-hell shot-in-the-dark. The Outsiders happened by at just the right time to sell us the decisive hyperdrive. By chance we woke up a Slaver from his billion year sleep just in time to disorganize the kzinti before our attack. That’s a lot of luck.”
“In war one seizes luck and uses it!”
“Agreed. But after the Battle of Wunderland it was thirteen years of slugging. Our luck was dry and our leadership mediocre, begging your pardon, sir.”
“Have you read Chumeyer’s War?”
“Of course Chumeyer was a genius! He demolished the Patriarch’s supply lines and communications brilliantly. Yet his book is already obsolete. That was the last war! Chumeyer had hyperdrive ships and surprise against lumbering kzinti transports who had yet to hear about the Battle of Wunderland! We owe the war to Chumeyer. Yet his victories were in interstellar space. What about the assaults on kzinti strongholds? We have to go back to the Great War of 1916 to find parallels to such stupidity. Many heroes; staggering casualties; ill-trained leaders. For the next war we dare not depend on luck. We’ll need better discipline, much better discipline. We’ll need planning and a radically new strategy. It’s the training we do now that will forge the navy we’ll need sooner than any of you veterans think”
“That from a man who starts fistfights he can’t win?”
“I didn’t start that fight, sir. I raised my voice.”
Fry was grinning. He knew how to hit a man hard without raising a finger. “And, of course, they hit you first?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re very good at training, I hear.”
“I think so, sir”
“I have a better job for you.”
“There isn’t a better job, sir”
“What’s this? You’re going to refuse to take orders from me?”
Yankee knew very well that the general was referring to mutiny. It was a delicate point and he hesitated, beginning an answer he didn’t have the words to finish-so he started over. He was damned if he was going to kiss a Belters butt “Yes, sir I do what is in the best interest of the navy.”
Fry garumphed in his throat. “In that case, I’ll have to clock you in the crotch to persuade you. Everything is fair in a fisticuffs fight, right? Are you ready? Stick up your dukes. How would you like to rescue your cousin?”
Clandeboye had to repeat that last sentence to himself He was dumbfounded. “Nora?” Even after he said her name, he was disbelieving, checking his memory frantically for other cousins he might have forgotten.
“We have information that Lieutenant Argamentine may have been captured.”
“Is she alive?”
“We don’t know. She was captured with her hyperdrive scout. We’d really like to find out what happened to it”
“Where is it?”
“We don’t know. Your assignment might involve a tour of duty inside the Patriarchy”
“I don’t think anyone in the navy would trust me inside the Patriarchy”
Lucas Fry smiled enigmatically while he rubbed his hand through the strip of white brush topping his side-shaved skull. “The men you brought back alive trust you.”
This conversation was unnerving Clandeboye. “But do you trust me, sir?”