Then, something more happened. As the last of the soldiers passed, Blauvain civilians began to fall in behind them, extending the line. By mid-afternoon, the last soldier had gone by and the first figure in civilian clothes passed the casket, neither touching it nor speaking to it, but pausing to look with an unusual, almost shy curiosity upon the face of the body inside, in the name of which so much might have happened.
Already, behind that one man, the line of civilians was half again as long as the line of soldiers had been.
It was nearly midnight, long past the time when it had been planned to shut the gates of the lobby, when the last of the civilians had gone and the casket could be transferred to a room at Expeditionary Headquarters from which it would be shipped back to the Dorsai. This business of shipping a body home happened seldom, even in the case of mercenaries of the highest rank; but there had never been any doubt that it would happen in the case of Kensie. The enlisted men and officers of his command had contributed the extra funds necessary for the shipment. - Ian, when his time came, would undoubtedly be buried in the earth of whatever world on which he fell. Only if he happened to be at home when the time came, would that earth be soil of the Dorsai. But Kensie had been - Kensie.
"Do you know what's been suggested to me?" asked Moro, as he, Pel and I, along with several of the Expedition's senior officers - Charley ap Morgan among them - stood watching Kensie's casket being brought into the room at Expedition HQ, "There's a proposal to get the city government to put up a statue of him, here in Blauvain. A statue of Kensie."
Neither Pel nor I answered. We stood watching the placing of the casket. For all its massive appearance, four men handled it and the body within easily. The apparently thick metal of its sides were actually hollow to reduce shipping weight. The soldiers settled it, took off the transparent weather cover and carried it out. The body of Kensie lay alone, uncovered; the profile of his face, seen from where we stood, quiet and still against the light pink cloth of the casket's lining. The senior officers who were with us and who had not been in the line of soldiers filing through the lobby, now began to go into the room, one at a time to stand for a second at the casket before coming out again.
"It's what we never had on St. Marie," said Pel, after a long moment. He was a different man since Padma had talked to him. "A leader. Someone to love and follow. Now that our people have seen there is such a thing, they want something like it for themselves."
He looked up at Charley ap Morgan, who was just coming back out of the room.
"You Dorsai changed us," Pel said.
"Did we?" said Charley, stopping. "How do you feel about Ian now, Pel?"
"Ian?" Pel frowned. "We're talking about Kensie. Ian's just - what he always was."
"What you all never understood," said Charley, looking from one to the other of us.
"Ian's a good man," said Pel. "I don't argue with that. But there'll never be another Kensie."
"There'll never be another Ian," said Charley. "He and Kensie made up one person. That's what none of you ever understood. Now half of Ian is gone, into the grave."
Pel shook his head slowly.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't believe that. I can't believe Ian ever needed anyone - even Kensie. He's never risked anything, so how could he lose anything? After Kensie's death he did nothing but sit on his spine here insisting that he couldn't risk Kensie's reputation by doing anything - until events forced his hand. That's not the action of a man who's lost the better half of himself"
"I didn't say better half," said Charley, "I only said half - and just half is enough. Stop and try to feel for a moment what it would be like. Stop for a second and feel how it would be if you -were amputated down the middle - if the life that was closest to you was wrenched away, shot down in the street by a handful of self-deluded, crackpot revolutionaries from a world you'd come to rescue. Suppose it was like that for you, how would you feel?"
Pel had gone a little pale as Charley talked. When he answered his voice had a slight echo of the difference and youngness it had had after Padma had talked to him.
"I guess…" he said very slowly, and ran off into silence.
"Yes?" said Charley. "Now you're beginning to understand, to feel as Ian feels. Suppose you feel like this and just outside the city where the assassins of your brother are hiding there are six battalions of seasoned soldiers who can turn that same city - who can hardly be held back from turning that city - into another Rochmont, at one word from you. Tell me, is it easy, or is it hard, not to say that one word that will turn them loose?"
"It would be…" The words seemed dragged from Pel, "hard…"
"Yes," said Charley, grimly, "as it was hard for Ian."
"Then why did he do it?" demanded Pel.
"He told you why," said Charley. "He did it to protect his brother's military reputation, so that not even after his death should Kensie Graeme's name be an excuse for anything but the highest and best of military conduct."
"But Kensie was dead. He couldn't hurt his own reputation!"
"His troops could," said Charley. "His troops wanted someone to pay for Kensie's death. They wanted to leave a monument to Kensie and their grief for him, as long-lasting a monument as Rochmont has been to Jacques Chretian. There was only one way to satisfy them, and that was if Ian himself acted for them - as their agent - in dealing with the assassins. Because nobody could deny that Kensie's brother had the greatest right of all to represent all those who had lost with Kensie's death."
"You're talking about the fact that Ian killed the men, personally," said Moro. "But there was no way he could know he'd come face to face - "
He stopped, halted by the thin, faint smile on Charley's face.
"Ian was our Battle Op, our strategist," said Charley. "Just as Kensie was Field Commander, our tactician. Do you think that a strategist of Ian's ability couldn't lay a plan that would bring him face to face, alone, with the assassins once they were located?"
"What if they hadn't been located?" I asked. "What if I hadn't found out about Pel, and Pel hadn't told us what he knew?"
Charley shook his head.
"I don't know," he said. "Somehow Ian must have known this way would work - or he would have done it differently. For some reason he counted on help from you, Tom."
"Me!" I said. "What makes you say that?"
"He told me so." Charley looked at me strangely. "You know, many people thought that because they didn't understand Ian, that Ian didn't understand them. Actually, he understands other people unusually well. I think he saw something in you, Tom, he could rely on. And he was right, wasn't he?"
Once more, the winds I had felt - of the forces of which Padma had spoken, blew through me, chilling and enlightening me. Ian had felt those winds as well as I had - and understood them better. I could see the inevitability of it now. There had been only one pull on the many threads entangled in the fabric of events here; and that pull had been through me to Ian.
"When he went to that suite where the assassins were holed up," said Charley, "he intended to go in to them alone, and unarmed. And when he killed them with his bare hands, he did what every man in the Expeditionary force wanted to do. So, when that was done, the anger of the troops was lightning-rodded. Through Ian, they all had their revenge; and then they were free. Free just to mourn for Kensie as they're doing today. So Blauvain escaped; and the Dorsai reputation has escaped stain, and the state of affairs between the inhabited worlds hasn't been upset by an incident here on St. Marie that could make enemies out of worlds, like the Exotic and the Dorsai, and St. Marie, who should all be friends."