"All right then," said Cletus. "As I think I've told you all, the basic principle is that, from the individual right up to the largest organizations within the total Dorsai military command, each unit should be capable of reacting like a single member of a team made up of other members equal in size and importance to himself. That is, any one of the three soldiers in any given half squad should be able to operate in perfect unison with the other two members of his team with no more communication than a few code words or signals that would cue the others to standard actions or responses to any given situation. Similarly, the two teams in any squad should be able to work as partners with no more than a few code words or signals. Likewise, the four squads should be able to operate as a team in the group with each squad knowing its role in any one of a hundred or more group actions identifiable by code word or signal. Just as the two groups must be able to react together almost instinctively as a single command, the commandant of which should likewise be trained to react in pattern with the commandants of the commands with which he is associated."
Cletus stopped talking. Once more there was the small silence.
"You say you'll supply the patterns?" Tosca Aras said. "I mean you'll work out all these team actions that are triggered by code words and signals and so forth?"
"I already have them worked out," said Cletus.
"You have?" Aras' voice teetered on the edge of incredulity. "There must be thousands of them."
Cletus shook his head. "Something over twenty-three thousand, to be exact," he said. "But I think you may be missing the point. The actions of a team are included within the actions of the squad, just as the actions of the squad are included within the actions of the group. In short, it's like a language with twenty-three thousand words. There are innumerable combinations, but there's also a logical structure. Once you master the structure, then the choice of words within the sentence is severely restricted. In fact, there's only one ideal choice."
"Then why have such a complicated setup anyway?" asked David Ap Morgan.
Cletus turned to look at the young major. "The value of the system," he said, "doesn't come so much from the fact that there are a large number of combinations of tactical actions ranging from the team on up through the command, but from the fact that any large choice of action implies a certain spectrum of choices of action for the lesser elements of the command, so that the individual soldier, on hearing the general code word for the command to which he belongs, knows immediately within what limits the actions of all the groups, all the squads and his own team must be."
He paused. "In short," he said, "no one, right up through the battle operator or the commander of the total military unit, simply follows orders. Instead, they all - right down to the individual line soldier - react as a team member in a common effort. The result is that breaks in the chain of command, misunderstood or incorrect orders, and all the other things that go to mess up a battle plan by mischance, are bypassed. Not only that, but from the lowest ranks on up each subordinate is ready to step into the position of his superior with 90 per cent of the necessary knowledge that his superior had at the moment the superior was put out of action."
Arvid gave a low whistle of admiration. The other officers in the room all looked at him. With the exception of Cletus, he was the only one among them who had never been a practicing Dorsai field officer. Arvid looked embarrassed.
"A revolutionary concept," said Tosca Aras. "More than revolutionary if it works out in practice."
"It's going to have to work," said Cletus. "My whole scheme of strategy and tactics is based upon troops that can operate along those lines."
"Well, we'll see." Aras picked up the thick manual Cletus had issued to each of them just after dinner and which had been lying since then in his lap. He stood up. "An old dog learning new tricks is an understatement in my case. If the rest of you gentlemen don't mind I'll be getting to my homework."
He said good night and went out, starting a general exodus. Eachan stayed behind, and Arvid - Arvid, to apologize for that whistle.
"You see, sir," he said earnestly to Cletus, "it suddenly came clear to me, all of a sudden. I hadn't seen it before. But now I see how it all ties together."
"Good," said Cletus. "That's half the learning process done for you right there."
Arvid followed the others out of the living room. Eachan alone was left. Cletus looked at him.
"Do you see how it all hangs together?" Cletus asked him.
"Think so," said Eachan. "But remember, I've been living with you for the last half year - and I know most of the patterns in that manual of yours already."
He reached for the decanter behind the glasses ranked on the small table beside his chair and thoughtfully poured himself a small amount of whiskey.
"Shouldn't expect too much too soon," he said, sipping at it. "Any military man's bound to be a bit conservative. In the nature of us. But they'll come through, Cletus. It's beginning to be more than just a name with us here, this business of being Dorsais."
He turned out to be correct. By the time the officers' training program got under way a week later, all of those who had sat in the living room with Cletus that night knew their manuals by heart - if not yet quite by instinct. Cletus divided the officers to be trained among the six of them, in groups of roughly ten each, and training began.
Cletus took the class that he had labeled simply "Relaxation," the course that would train these officers to tap that extra source of energy he had demonstrated to them all at the Foralie stadium after running himself to the normal exhaustion point. His first class consisted of the six from the living room. Eachan was among them, although he already had more than a faint grasp of the technique involved. Cletus had been privately tutoring both him and Melissa in it for the past couple of months, and both had become noticeably capable with it. However, it was Eachan's suggestion - and Cletus found it a good one - that his inclusion in the class would be an example to the others that someone besides Cletus could achieve unusual physiological results.
Cletus began his class just before lunch, after they had completed the full day's physical training schedule, consisting of jungle gym, run and swim. They were physically unwound by the exercise, and more than a little empty because of the long hours since breakfast. In short, they were in a condition of maximum receptivity.
Cletus lined them up behind a long steel bar supported between two posts at about shoulder height off the ground.
"All right," he said to them. "Now I want you all to stand on your right legs. You can reach out and touch the bar in front of you with your fingertips to help keep your balance, but take your left feet off the ground and keep them off until I tell you you can put them down again."
They complied. Their pose was a little on the ridiculous side, and there were a few smiles at first, but these faded as the legs on which they stood began to tire. About the time when bearing all their weight upon the muscle of one leg was beginning to become actively painful, Cletus ordered them to switch legs and kept them standing with all their weight on their left legs until the muscles of calf and thigh began to tremble under their full body weight. Then he switched them back to the right leg, and then again to the left, shortening the intervals each time as the leg muscles became exhausted more quickly. Very shortly they stood before him on legs as uncertain as those of men who had been bedridden for a period of weeks.
"All right, now," Cletus said then, cheerfully, "I want you all up in a handstand, the palms of your hands on the ground, your arms fully extended. You can balance yourselves this time by letting your legs rest against the bar."
They obeyed. Once they were all up, Cletus gave them a further order.