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  The man shook his head angrily.

  Lambert gestured. One of the privates stepped behind the captive, took his arm, and twisted a little.

  “Echevarry wouldn’t do that to me,” he said through white lips.

  “Of course not,” Lambert said. “You’re his man.”

  “Think I wanna be just a number on some list in Frisco? Damn right I’m my bossman’s man!”

  Lambert gestured again. The private twisted harder.

  “Hold on, there,” Danielis barked. “Stop that!”

  The private let go, looking surprised. The prisoner drew a sobbing breath.

  “I’m amazed at you, Captain Lambert,” Danielis said. He felt his own face reddening. “If this has been your usual practice, there’s going to be a court-martial.”

  “No, sir,” Lambert said in a small voice. “Honest. Only . . . they don’t talk. Hardly any of them. What’m I supposed to do?”

  “Follow the rules of war.”

  “With rebels?”

  “Take that man away,” Danielis ordered. The privates made haste to do so.

  “Sorry, sir,” Lambert muttered. “I guess . . . I guess I’ve lost too many buddies. I hate to lose more, simply for lack of information.”

  “Me too.” A compassion rose in Danielis. He sat down on the table edge and began to roll a cigarette. “But you see, we aren’t in a regular war. And so, by a curious paradox, we have to follow the conventions more carefully than ever before.”

  “I don’t quite understand, sir.”

  Danielis finished the cigarette and gave it to Lambert: olive branch or something. He started another for himself. “The rebels aren’t rebels by their own lights,” he said. “They’re being loyal to a tradition that we’re trying to curb, eventually to destroy. Let’s face it, the average bossman is a fairly good leader. He may be descended from some thug who grabbed power by strong-arm methods during the chaos, but by now his family’s integrated itself with the region he rules. He knows it, and its people, inside out. He’s there in the flesh, a symbol of the community and its achievements, its folkways and essential independence. If you’re in trouble, you don’t have to work through some impersonal bureaucracy, you go direct to your bossman. His duties are as clearly defined as your own, and a good deal more demanding, to balance his privileges. He leads you in battle and in the ceremonies that give color and meaning to life. Your fathers and his have worked and played together for two or three hundred years. The land is alive with the memories of them. You and he belong.

  “Well, that has to be swept away, so we can go on to a higher level. But we won’t reach that level by alienating everyone. We’re not a conquering army; we’re more like the Householder Guard putting down a riot in some city. The opposition is part and parcel of our own society.”

  Lambert struck a match for him. He inhaled and finished: “On a practical plane, I might also remind you, Captain, that the federal armed forces, Fallonite and Brodskyite together, are none too large. Little more than a cadre, in fact. We’re a bunch of younger sons, countrymen who failed, poor citymen, adventurers, people who look to their regiment for that sense of wholeness they’ve grown up to expect and can’t find in civilian life.”

  “You’re too deep for me, sir, I’m afraid,” Lambert said. “Never mind,” Danielis sighed. “Just bear in mind, there are a good many more fighting men outside the opposing armies than in. If the bossmen could establish a unified command, that’d be the end of the Fallon government. Luckily, there’s too much provincial pride and too much geography between them for this to happen—unless we outrage them beyond endurance. What we want the ordinary freeholder, and even the ordinary bossman, to think, is: ‘Well, those Fallonites aren’t such bad guys, and if I keep on the right side of them I don’t stand to lose much, and should even be able to gain something at the expense of those who fight them to a finish.’ You see?”

  “Y-yes. I guess so.”

  “You’re a smart fellow, Lambert. You don’t have to beat information out of prisoners. Trick it out.”

  “I’ll try, sir.”

  “Good.” Danielis glanced at the watch that had been given him as per tradition, together with a sidearm, when he was first commissioned. (Such items were much too expensive for the common man. They had not been so in the age of mass production; and perhaps in the coming age—) “I have to go. See you around.”

  He left the tent feeling somewhat more cheerful than before. No doubt I am a natural-born preacher, he admitted, and I never could quite join in the horseplay at mess, and a lot of jokes go completely by me; but if I can get even a few ideas across where they count, that’s pleasure enough. A strain of music came to him, some men and a banjo under a tree, and he found himself whistling along. It was good that this much morale remained, after Maricopa and a northward march whose purpose had not been divulged to anybody.

  The conference tent was big enough to be called a pavilion. Two sentries stood at the entrance. Danielis was nearly the last to arrive, and found himself at the end of the table, opposite Brigadier General Perez. Smoke hazed the air and there was a muted buzz of conversation, but faces were taut.

  When the blue-robed figure with a Yang and Yin on the breast entered, silence fell like a curtain. Danielis was astonished to recognize Philosopher Woodworth. He’d last seen the man in Los Angeles, and assumed he would stay at the Esper center there. Must have come here by special conveyance, under special orders . . .

  Perez introduced him. Both remained standing, under the eyes of the officers. “I have some important news for you, gentlemen,” Perez said most quietly. “You may consider it an honor to be here. It means that in my judgment you can be trusted, first, to keep absolute silence about what you are going to hear, and second, to execute a vital operation of extreme difficulty.” Danielis was made shockingly aware that several men were not present whose rank indicated they should be.

  “I repeat,” Perez said, “any breach of secrecy and the whole plan is ruined. In. that case, the war will drag on for months or years. You know how bad our position is. You also know it will grow still worse as our stocks of those supplies the enemy now denies us are consumed. We could even be beaten. I’m not defeatist to say that, only realistic. We could lose the war.

  “On the other hand, if this new scheme pans out, we may break the enemy’s back this very month.”

  He paused to let that sink in before continuing:

  “The plan was worked out by GHQ in conjunction with Esper Central in San Francisco some weeks ago. It’s the reason we are headed north—” He let the gasp subside that ran through the stifling air. “Yes, you know that the Esper Order is neutral in political disputes. But you also know that it defends itself when attacked. And you probably know that an attack was made on it by the rebels. They seized the Napa Valley settlement and have been spreading malicious rumors about the Order since then. Would you like to comment on that, Philosopher Woodworth?”

  The man in blue nodded and said coolly: “We’ve our own ways of findin’ out things—intelligence service, you might say—so I can give y’all a report of the facts. St. Helena was assaulted at a time when most of its adepts were away, helpin’ a new community get started out in Montana.” How did they travel so fast? Danielis wondered. Teleport, or what? “I don’t know, myself, if the enemy knew about that or were just lucky. Anyhow, when the two or three adepts that were left came and warned them off, fightin’ broke out and the adepts were killed before they could act.” He smiled. “We don’t claim to be immortal, except the way every livin’ thing is immortal. Nor infallible, either. So now St. Helena’s occupied. We don’t figure to take any immediate steps about that, because a lot of people in the community might get hurt.

  “As for the yarns the enemy command’s been handin’ out, well, I reckon I’d do the same, if I had a chance like that. Everybody knows an adept can do things that nobody else can. Troops that realize they’ve done wrong to the Order are goin’ to be scared
of. supernatural revenge. You’re educated men here, and know there’s nothin’ supernatural involved, just a way to use the powers latent in most of us. You also know the Order doesn’t believe in revenge. But the ordinary foot soldier doesn’t think your way. His officers have got to restore his spirit somehow. So they fake some equipment and tell him that’s what the adepts were really usin’—an advanced technology, sure, but only a set of machines that can be put out of action if you’re brave, same as any other machine. That’s what happened.

  “Still, it is a threat to the Order; and we can’t let an attack on our people go unpunished, either. So Esper Central has decided to help out your side. The sooner this war’s over, the better for everybody.”

  A sigh gusted around the table, and a few exultant oaths. The hair stirred on Danielis’ neck. Perez lifted a hand.

  “Not too fast, please,” the general said. “The adepts are not going to go around blasting your opponents for you. It was one hell of a tough decision for them to do as much as they agreed to. I, uh, understand that the, uh, personal development of every Esper will be set back many years by this much violence. They’re making a big sacrifice.

  “By their charter, they can use psionics to defend an establishment against attack. Okay . . . an assault on San Francisco will be construed as one on Central, their world headquarters.”

  The realization of what was to come was blinding to Danielis. He scarcely heard Perez’ carefully dry continuation:

  “Let’s review the strategic picture. By now the enemy holds more than half of California, all of Oregon and Idaho, and a good deal of Washington. We, this army, we’re using the last land access to San Francisco that we’ve got. The enemy hasn’t tried to pinch that off yet, because the troops we pulled out of the north—those that aren’t in the field at present—make a strong city garrison that’d sally out. He’s collecting too much profit elsewhere to accept the cost.

  “Nor can he invest the city with any hope of success. We still hold Puget Sound and the southern California ports. Our ships bring in ample food and munitions. His own sea power is much inferior to ours: chiefly schooners donated by coastal bossmen, operating out of Portland. He might overwhelm an occasional convoy, but he hasn’t tried that so far because it isn’t worth his trouble; there would be others, more heavily escorted. And of course he can’t enter the Bay, with artillery and rocket emplacements on both sides of the Golden Gate. No, about all he can do is maintain some water communication with Hawaii and Alaska.

  “Nevertheless, his ultimate object is San Francisco. It has to be—the seat of government and industry, the heart of the nation.

  “Well, then, here’s the plan. Our army is to engage the Sierra Command and its militia auxiliaries again, striking out of San Jose. That’s a perfectly logical maneuver. Successful, it would cut his California forces in two. We know, in fact, that he is already concentrating men in anticipation of precisely such an attempt.

  “We aren’t going to succeed. We’ll give him a good stiff battle and be thrown back. That’s the hardest part: to feign a serious defeat, even convincing our own troops, and still maintain good order. We’ll have a lot of details to thresh out about that.

  “We’ll retreat northward, up the Peninsula toward Frisco. The enemy is bound to pursue. It will look like a God-given chance to destroy us and get to the city walls.

  “When he is well into the Peninsula, with the ocean on his left and the Bay on his right, we will outflank him and attack from the rear. The Esper adepts will be there to help. Suddenly he’ll be caught, between us and the capital’s land defenses. What the adepts don’t wipe out, we will. Nothing will remain of the Sierra Command but a few garrisons. The rest of the war will be a mopping-up operation.

  “It’s a brilliant piece of strategy. Like all such, it’s damn difficult to execute. Are you prepared to do the job?”

  Danielis didn’t raise his voice with the others. He was thinking too hard of Laura.

  Northward and to the right there was some fighting. Cannon spoke occasionally, or a drumfire of rifles; smoke lay thin over the grass and the wind-gnarled live oaks which covered those hills. But down along the seacoast was only surf, blowing air, a hiss of sand across the dunes.

  Mackenzie rode on the beach, where the footing was easiest and the view wildest Most of his regiment were inland. But that was a wilderness: rough ground, woods, the snags of ancient homes, making travel slow and hard. Once this area had been densely peopled, but the firestorm after the Hell-bomb scrubbed it clean and today’s reduced population could not make a go on such infertile soil. There didn’t even seem to be any foremen near this left wing of the army.

  The Rolling Stones had certainly not been given it for that reason. They could have borne the brunt at the center as well as those outfits which actually were there, driving the enemy back toward San Francisco. They had been blooded often enough in this war, when they operated out of Calistoga to help expel the Fallonites from northern California. So thoroughly had that job been done that now only a skeleton force need remain in charge. Nearly the whole Sierra Command had gathered at Modesto, met the northward-moving opposition army that struck at them out of San Jose, and sent it in a shooting retreat. Another day or so, and the white city should appear before their eyes.

  And there the enemy will be sure to make a stand, Mackenzie thought, with the garrison to reinforce him. And his positions will have to be shelled; maybe we’ll have to take the place street by street. Laura, kid, will you be alive at the end?

  Of course, maybe it won’t happen that way. Maybe my scheme’ll work and we’ll win easy—What a horrible word “maybe” is! He slapped his hands together with a pistol sound.

  Speyer threw him a glance. The major’s people were safe; he’d even been able to visit them at Mount Lassen, after the northern campaign was over. “Rough,” he said.

  “Rough on everybody,” Mackenzie said with a thick anger. “This is a filthy war.”

  Speyer shrugged. “No different from most, except that this time Pacificans are on the receiving as well as the giving end.”

  “You know damn well I never liked the business, anyplace.”

  “What man in his right mind does?”

  “When I want a sermon I’ll ask for one.”

  “Sorry,” said Speyer, and meant it.

  “I’m sorry too,” said Mackenzie, instantly contrite. “Nerves on edge. Damnation! I could almost wish for some action.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised if we got some. This whole affair smells wrong to me.”

  Mackenzie looked around him. On the right the horizon was bounded by hills, beyond which the low but massive San Bruno range lifted. Here and there he spied one of his own squads, afoot or ahorse. Overhead sputtered a plane. But there was plenty of concealment for a redoubt. Hell could erupt at any minute . . . though necessarily a small hell, quickly reduced by howitzer or bayonet, casualties light. (Huh! Every one of those light casualties was a man dead, with women and children to weep for him, or a man staring at the fragment of his arm, or a man with eyes and face gone in a burst of shot, and what kind of unsoldierly thoughts were these?)

  Seeking comfort, Mackenzie glanced left. The ocean rolled greenish-gray, glittering far out, rising and breaking in a roar of white combers closer to land. He smelled salt and kelp. A few gulls mewed above dazzling sands. There was no sail or smoke-puff—only emptiness. The convoys from Puget Sound to San Francisco and the lean swift ships of the coastal bossmen were miles beyond the curve of the world.

  Which was as it should be. Maybe things were working out okay on the high waters. One could only try, and hope. And . . . it had been his suggestion, James Mackenzie speaking at the conference General Cruikshank held between the battles of Mariposa and San Jose; the same James Mackenzie who had first proposed that the Sierra Command come down out of the mountains, and who had exposed the gigantic fraud of Esperdom, and succeeded in playing down for his men the fact that behind the fraud lay a mys
tery one hardly dared think about. He would endure in the chronicles, that colonel, they would sing ballads about him for half a thousand years.

  Only it didn’t feel that way. James Mackenzie knew he was not much more than average bright under the best of conditions, now dull-minded with weariness and terrified of his daughter’s fate. For himself he was haunted by the fear of certain crippling wounds. Often he had to drink himself to sleep. He was shaved, because an officer must maintain appearances, but realized very well that if he hadn’t had an orderly to do the job for him he would be as shaggy as any buck private. His uniform was faded and threadbare, his body stank and itched, his mouth yearned for tobacco but there had been some trouble in the commissariat and they were lucky to eat. His achievements amounted to patchwork jobs carried out in utter confusion, or to slogging like this and wishing only for an end to the whole mess. One day, win or lose, his body would give out on him—he could feel the machinery wearing to pieces, arthritic twinges, shortness of breath, dozing off in the middle of things—and the termination of himself would be as undignified and lonely as that of every other human slob. Hero? What an all-time laugh!

  He yanked his mind back to the immediate situation. Behind him a core of the regiment accompanied the artillery along the beach, a thousand men with motorized gun carriages, caissons, mule-drawn wagons, a few trucks, one precious armored car. They were a dun mass topped with helmets, in loose formation, rifles or bows to hand. The sand deadened their footfalls, so that only the surf and the wind could be heard. But whenever the wind sank, Mackenzie caught the tune of the hex corps: a dozen leathery older men, mostly Indians, carrying the wands of power and whistling together the Song Against Witches. He took no stock in magic himself, yet when that sound came to him the skin crawled along his backbone.

  Everything’s in good order, he insisted. We’re doing fine. Then: But Phil’s right. This is a screwball business. The enemy should have fought through to a southward line of retreat, not let themselves be boxed.