"A scholar," said Cletus. His gray eyes fastened now on the Exotic. "I'm writing volume four right now, of a twenty-volume work I started three years ago - on tactics and strategical considerations. But never mind that now. May I meet the rest of the people here?"
Mondar nodded. "I'm Mondar, as you say."
"Colonel Eachan Khan," he said, turning to the Dorsai at his right, "may I introduce Lieutenant-Colonel Cletus Grahame of the Alliance forces?"
"Honored, Colonel," said Eachan Khan, in a clipped, old-fashioned British accent.
"Honored to meet you, sir," said Cletus,
"And Colonel Khan's daughter, Melissa Khan," went on Mondar.
"Hello." Cletus smiled again at her.
"How do you do?" she said, coldly.
"Our host, Secretary Dow deCastries, you've already recognized," Mondar said. "Mr. Secretary - Colonel Cletus Grahame."
"I'm afraid it's a little late to invite you to dinner, Colonel," said deCastries deeply. "The rest of us have eaten." He beckoned the steward. "We can offer you some wine."
"And, finally, the gentleman on the secretary's right," said Mondar. "Mr. Pater Ten. Mr. Ten's got an eidetic memory, Colonel. You'll find he's got an encyclopedic fund of knowledge on just about everything."
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Ten," said Cletus. "Maybe I ought to arrange to borrow you, instead of library materials, for my next research."
"Don't bother!" said Pater Ten, unexpectedly. He had a creaky, high-pitched, but surprisingly carrying, voice. "I looked at your first three volumes - wild theories, backed up by warmed-over military history. They must've been going to kick you out of the Academy if you hadn't requested a transfer first. Anyway, you're out. Now, who'll read you? You'll never finish a fourth book."
"I told you," said Mondar in the conversational pause that followed this small verbal explosion. Cletus was gazing at the small man with a faint smile not unlike that of deCastries, earlier. "Mr. Ten has an encyclopedic fund of knowledge."
"I see what you mean," said Cletus. "But knowledge and conclusions are two different things. That's why I'll be finishing all sixteen of the other volumes in spite of Mr. Ten's doubts. In fact that's why I'm headed for Kultis, now, to make sure I get them written."
"That's right - haul victory out of defeat there," creaked Pater Ten. "Win the war at Bakhalla in six weeks and become an Alliance hero."
"Yes, not such a bad idea," said Cletus, as the lounge steward deftly slid a clean wineglass in front of him and filled it from the bottle of canary-yellow liquid on the table. "Only it isn't either the Alliance or the Coalition that's going to win in the long run."
"That's a strong statement, Colonel," said deCastries. "Also, a little close to treason, isn't it? That part about the Alliance, spoken by an Alliance officer?"
"You think so?" Cletus said, and smiled. "Is someone here thinking of reporting me?"
"Possibly." There was abruptly a note of something chilling in deCastries' deep voice. "Meanwhile, it's interesting to hear you talk. What makes you think it won't be either the Alliance or the Coalition that'll end up having the strongest voice among the colonies on Kultis?"
"The laws of historical development," said Cletus, "are working to that end."
"Laws," said Melissa Khan, angrily. The tension she had been feeling beneath the calm talk had become too much to bear. "Why does everybody think" - she glanced a moment, almost bitterly at her father - "that there's some impractical set of principles or theories or codes that everybody ought to live by? It's practical people who make things happen! You have to be practical, nowdays, or you might as well be dead."
"Melissa," said deCastries, smiling at her, "honors the practical man. I'm afraid I have to agree with her. Practical experience works."
"As opposed to theories, Colonel," flung in Pater Ten, gibingly, "as opposed to bookish theories. Wait'll you get out among practical field officers in the Neuland-Bakhalla jungle in a practical fire-fight, and discover what war's really like! Wait'll you hear your first energy weapon sending its sizzle overhead, and you'll find out - "
"He's wearing the Alliance Medal of Honor, Mr. Ten."
The sudden, flat, clipped tones of Eachan Khan chopped across the small man's tirade like an ax. In the new silence Eachan pointed a steady, brown forefinger at the red, white and gold bar at the far right of the row of ribbons decorating Cletus' jacket.
2
The silence continued a moment at the table.
"Colonel," said Eachan, "what's the trouble with your leg?"
Cletus grinned wryly. "It's part prosthetic about the knee, now," he said. "Perfectly comfortable, but you can notice it when I walk." He looked back at Pater Ten. "Actually, Mr. Ten's pretty close to being right about my practical military experience. I only had three months of active duty after being commissioned, during the last Alliance - Coalition brush war on Earth seven years ago."
"But you ended up those three months with the Medal of Honor," said Melissa. The expression with which she had watched him before had now changed completely. She swung about to Pater Ten. "I suppose that's one of the few things you don't know anything about, though?"
Pater Ten stared hatingly back at her.
"Do you, Pater?" murmured deCastries.
"There was a Lieutenant Grahame decorated seven years ago by the Alliance," spat out Pater Ten. "His division had made an attack drop and landing on a Pacific island held by our garrisons. The division was routed and cut up, but Lieutenant Grahame managed to put together a guerrilla force that was successful in bottling our people up in their strong fortified areas until Alliance reinforcements came a month later. He ran into a traveling mine the day before he would have been relieved. They stuck him in their Academy because he couldn't qualify physically for field duty after that."
There was another, but shorter, moment of silence at the table.
"So," said deCastries, in an oddly thoughtful tone, turning in his fingers the half-filled wineglass on the tablecloth before him, "it seems the scholar was a hero, Colonel."
"No, Lord no," said Cletus. "The lieutenant was a rash soldier, that's all. If I'd understood things then as well as I do now, I'd never have run into that mine."
"But here you are - headed back to where the fighting is!" said Melissa.
"That's true," said Cletus, "but as I said, I'm a wiser man now. I don't want any more medals."
"What do you want, Cletus?" asked Mondar, from the end of the table. The Outbond had been watching Cletus with an un-Exotic-like intensity for some few minutes now.
"He wants to write sixteen more volumes," sneered Pater Ten.
"As a matter of fact, Mr. Ten's right," said Cletus quietly to Mondar. "What I really want to do is finish my work on tactics. Only I've found out first I'm going to have to create the conditions they'll apply to."
"Win the war on Neuland in sixty days!" said Pater Ten. "Just as I said."
"Less time than that, I think," said Cletus, and he gazed calmly about at the sudden changes of expression on the faces of all but Mondar and Pater Ten.
"You must believe in yourself as a military expert, Colonel," said deCastries. Like Mondar's, his gaze upon Cletus had grown interested.
"But I'm not an expert," said Cletus. "I'm a scholar. There's a difference. An expert's a man who knows a great deal about his subject. A scholar's someone who knows all there is that's available to be known about it."
"It's still only theories," said Melissa. She looked at him puzzledly.
"Yes," he said to her, "but the effective theorist's got an advantage over the practician."
She shook her head, but said nothing - sinking back against the cushion of her seat, gazing at him with her lower Up caught between her teeth.