He had not been surprised to find Helene’s door unguarded. He had seen the same tactics used on Hallam for the same holy ends.

The guards at the patriarch’s door were more obvious but harder to circumvent. Marcel Dumezil’s apartment was in the second story of the town hall, with guards lounging on the catwalk before it. The two windows were shuttered and each was five meters from the ground. They would be impossible to enter – or so the guards thought.

Jan reached the roof from the rear of the building and looped a line around the chimney, then rappelled to the level of the window. He was in shadow and around the corner from the guards. As long as he remained silent, he would go undetected. He listened and was reassured by the patriarch’s heavy breathing.

The shutters were latched from within but the hinges were leather and yielded instantly to his knife. He slipped inside.

Had the patriarch been a normal man, Jan could have awakened him and threatened him for the key, but the patriarch was a man of God and therefore unpredictable. He might cry out, either thinking himself invincible or valuing his life too lightly.

However, such threats would be unnecessary. On the table beside the patriarch’s head was a ring of keys. In a settlement with fewer than a half-dozen locks, there was no doubt that the key he sought was on it. The task was proving too easy and Jan hesitated, then realized that he was giving his enemy credit for too much sophistication.

The patriarch slept on. Jan’s knife was near at hand. It would only take one move, that yawning mouth covered to silence any outcry, and the zealot would be dead. With effective leadership gone, the purge might be ended.

A shaft of light from one of Harmony’s three moons fell across old Marcel’s face. Even in sleep his features showed no relaxation. A mystery Jan had all but forgotten flashed in his mind – who had thrown the grenade? Who had killed Tom Dennison, the navigator Jan had never seen in life? Who had ordered Jason D’Angelo’s death; who had ordered the attack on Valikili when he kept liaison with Helene? Whose actions had prompted this situation, their flight, Helene’s imprisonment, Valikili’s wound?

The patriarch – Marcel Dumezil. Even those crimes he had neither committed nor ordered could be laid at his feet because of his influence.

Jan raised his knife, running his finger along the edge. He had sharpened it before the night’s mission and the leather hinges had not dulled it at all. The blade would do whatever he set it to – silently and efficiently. ‘

A vagrant breeze stirred the old man’s hair, sending a wisp to tickle his nose. He snorted, stirred, then subsided.

Marcel Dumezil, colonist, organizer, leader, a man of immense talents, immense potential for good in his community – what drove him to this purge?

He was so like old Daniel Andrax.

*****

This scene recurs in others of my novels, as well. The man (and once, the woman) who has a genuine grievance stands over his/her tormentor, and cannot drive the blade home. Sometimes it works out well; sometimes that forbearance leads to disaster. The issue is not morality, but a genuine incapacity to do the deed.

In the novel Cyan, in its first draft, Keir does drive the knife home – but it was all wrong, and deeply anticlimactic. It took me years to find Keir’s solution to the conundrum.

Two days passed. The river gate was crudely patched. The ten offworld rifles were charged and distributed and twenty men – ten rifle-armed, ten armed with bows – stood atop the palisade.

For two days there had been no sign of the renegades, but they would return. It would be months before the melt and in all the barren desert outside the palisade there was no food. Armed parties had gone upriver, then along the shore of the lake in both directions without finding either the renegades or any trace of their presence. Of course the colonists knew that Andrax was a master of his trade; he would have covered the fugitives’ tracks and there was no reason for the band to stay near water; they had merely to come down once or twice a day to drink.

But they had to have food and in all that barren waste there was none. So the colonists thought.

In fact the seven renegades were eating well enough on the dried meat that Valikili had stored against such an eventuality, nor would they have starved in any case. Along the river grew a thin fringe of siskal and lal which would have provided a meager fare; and the small, rodentlike miliks – creatures which live on the dried seedpods left behind by the herds – were available. There were few enough of these, but Jan could have trapped or shot them. In all there was enough to eat if one remained within reach of the river and stayed on the move, never exhausting the supplies of a given piece of ground.

It was fortunate for Valikili that this was not necessary, for his arrow wound, though well treated, gave him much pain. Jan had abandoned his Scout’s leathers in favor of furs in order to better blend into the community, but he had not left the uniform in his quarters. He had buried it with a bow, quiver, three knives, a twenty-liter water container, some dried siskal fruit, and medical supplies judiciously stolen from the community infirmary.

Helene remained locked in her quarters, the window now sealed shut and a newly attached padlock and hasp securing the door. The patriarch had met with his closest advisors to decide her fate, but as yet they were content to use her as bait.

Two more days passed and the colonists began to wonder what would happen. No carnivores nosed about at that time of year, and only one of the renegades seemed to have been injured. Where could they be? Surely their hunger would have driven them to some desperate move by now?

What if they had decided to abandon Helene Dumezil? What if Valikili had died and the others had gone upstream toward the mountains? There they would find game throughout the year, though it was never plentiful. Of course they would never make it to the mountains; they would starve on the journey.

***

On the fifth night Jan slipped past the sentries and found Helene. She was unhurt, she assured him through the wall, and safe enough for the moment. The patriarch had bragged to her that she was being used as bait.

Jan considered the situation. He could destroy the padlock with two shots but that would alert the guards who manned the palisade. Could he and Helene win free with the guards alerted? It was a chance he chose not to take, so he faded back into the night.

Where there was a lock, there was a key; and in a colony where one man ruled with the voice of God, that man would have the key. Jan slipped his express pistol back into its holster and drew his knife.

He had not been surprised to find Helene’s door unguarded, for he had already spotted the three hidden sentries who waited to pounce on anyone who came to rescue her. He had seen the same tactics used on Hallam for the same holy ends.

What would they do to Valikili?

Horrified, Henri shrank back into the shadows. Something had to be done, but his wits had deserted him and he could think of no plan.

He could only think of one thing – that the madness might pass. He should have tried to help Valikili, and would have but for Marie; his first duty was to his wife. He took her trembling arm and led her away from the crowd toward the south gate. They would flee to the wilderness. They could remain away from the colony and the stored food supply only so long, but in the next few days the madness might pass.

He hoped that it would, but he did not fully believe it.

Valikili was frightened for Henry Staal and cursed him for running after the colonists. Together they might have a chance to survive; divided they were in dire straits. At least Marcel Damle had remained, and Helene was close by where he could protect her.

Valikili had accepted Monism but he had not been so foolish as to assume that the Monists accepted him. He and Nur Mohammet were racially different as well as crew members. Unlike Jan he had not been schooled in small-group dynamics, but he could smell the danger in his position.

He led Marcel and Helene to his house, but paused only long enough to pick up the bundle he had prepared against such an eventuality and his bow, quiver, and blade. The rifles and ammunition were stored in “the armory,” a locked closet in the town hall. If they could get them, they could hold them for a ransom of food, for without the ten offworld rifles and Jan’s express pistol the colonists would be unable to hunt effectively during the coming melt. Levi-Stuer was working on a muzzle-loader Andrax had designed, but so far had completed only one unreliable prototype.

Marcel had shrugged off his shock and stolen a bow and quiver from the house next to Valikili’s, while Valikili had stolen a third bow and quiver for Helene. They made their way to the armory and Valikili went to work on the door with the axe he had brought for that purpose.

The colonists had also thought of the armory and a knot of them came charging around the town hall. Valikili spun around and faced them with his axe as Marcel and Helene released their arrows. Two arrows and the crowd was upon them. Valikili laid about him with the axe, his massive arms swinging in short, vicious arcs. For a moment the colonists fell back, then an arrow from the crowd struck Valikili in the thigh and he went down. Marcel stood over him with the axe he had dropped as they closed in again.

Suddenly he heard cries of fear from the colonists and they were falling back. Marcel spun to meet the new challenge behind him and found Andrax there, firing methodically. Nur, Adrian Dumezil, Henri, and Marie were behind the scout, unarmed.

Valikili felt himself lifted and carried. Through the haze of his pain he saw Nur, Henri, and Marcel. Beyond them Jan Andrax stood, pistol upraised but not firing, and Marie and Adrian Dumezil were gathering blades and bows from the blood soaked ground. Helene was nowhere in sight.

Andrax had circled around the palisade with Nur and Adrian Dumezil at his heels, intending to enter the south gate to search for the rest of the crew. There they had met Henri and Marie and the quintet had gone in search of their missing companions. Slipping from house to house toward Valikili’s quarters, they had heard the fight at the armory and arrived just in time to see Helene being dragged back into the crowd while Marcel tried to stem what would have been a final rush. Only the superior firepower afforded by the express pistol had saved them.

“Who will take a hand to purify God’s community?”

Jan looked left and right while rising to his feet with the congregation. There were two persons between him and the aisle and somewhere outside Nur Mohammet sat in ignorance, not knowing that he was marked for death.

“Who will stand with God? Who will cast out the wicked?”

Jan moved, shouting, “I will!” He shoved past the two on his left and reached the aisle. Dumezil was dumbfounded by Jan’s action; he stopped in midsentence.

Then Jan bolted for the door.

Two burly colonists had been posted to stop him.

Jan had refused the patriarch’s order to surrender his express pistol to the colony’s armory and was never without it. He wore it now, but strapped to his thigh inside his trousers. He had not dared to wear it openly to the services.

Still he was a Scout, and therefore a master of weaponless combat. He caught one colonist’s outstretched arm and hurled him down the aisle, then downed the second with a blow to the throat. A hand fell on his shoulder and spun him around. The whole congregation was on its feet and coming for him. Someone dodged past him, trying to get behind him. Jan recognized him as Adrian Dumezil, but could not reach him for fighting off those before him.

But Adrian did not attack him from behind; instead he threw open the door of the meeting house and Jan spun in instant retreat. Adrian pounded at his side.

Damle, Staal, and Valikili were in desperate danger but there was nothing Jan could do for them now. Nur would be in his own house, reading the Koran as was his custom.

As he ran, Jan ripped open his trousers and fished out his express pistol. The colonists were on his heels as he rounded the comer of Nur’s street. He fired a maximum charge at the wall of Nur’s dwelling, aiming high. It struck a log and exploded in a burst of bark and splinters. Jan and Adrian ran side by side, the colonists behind them, as Nur burst out of his house to see what was wrong.

More than anyone, Nur was prepared for what had happened. He took it all in at a glance and ran.

The main gate was closed and barred. Jan fired over Nur’s head repeatedly, each shot a maximum charge, until the gate gave way, falling outward in a cloud of debris. The trio ran through the gap and down toward the river where Jan threw himself behind a slight rise along the bank and dialed the power down. The colonists were streaming out the gate and he shot repeatedly into their packed mass. They broke ranks and retreated behind the palisade.

***

Valikili drew Helene to one side as the crowd ran after Jan and Adrian. Marcel Damle stood just outside the town hall shaking his head in shock, muttering over and over, “They did it; they really did it.” Henri Staal had run with the crowd; Valikili could not believe that he intended to join in the persecution of his shipmates and hoped that the man would not be lynched if he tried to calm the crowd.

Henri was near the back of the crowd when they poured through the palisade gate and was thrown back when they reversed themselves in the face of Jan’s fire. He pulled Marie into the shadows of a nearby hut, trying to decide a course of action. The colonists were milling about while the patriarch attempted to restore order. Some had armed themselves with clubs; others had retreated to get bows and rifles. A few of the colonists were running about trying to calm their neighbors, vainly attempting to stem the madness the patriarch had started. Levi-Stuer was running from man to man, shouting for reason, tears streaming down his face, but none would hear him.

Henri started forward, then hesitated. If they would not listen to Levi-Stuer, a colonist whom they respected, what would they do to a crewman, even if he were a Monist?

What would they do to Valikili?

Jan had warned them, but they would not listen.

Only Nur, whose difference was even more outstanding than Jan’s, truly believed that the crew members were in danger. Henri flatly refused to listen, pointing out that he had been fully accepted and had married. Valikili echoed his sentiments, though Jan thought he detected more than a trace of hidden worry. Valikili remembered the night he had been attacked, but that was a year past. Marcel Darmle had not found a girl to marry, nor was he likely to do so. Still, Marcel had made many friends, including Marcel Dumezil, the patriarch’s eldest son.

Angi remained unmarried. Her relationship with Jan had cooled only slightly, though she was impatient with his refusal to marry her. He did not understand why she did not marry; certainly there were at least two dozen eligible bachelors and she could have had any one or two of them for the asking.

Sabine Conners had not revealed his identity to anyone but Angi. He was not convinced that Jan was imagining things; he, too, remembered Hallam’s World.

***

Jan made his warnings and remained ready for what he feared to be inevitable, but the day it came he was caught unprepared. The entire colony, save Nur Mohammet, had gathered for the Sabbath service in the town hall and the patriarch rose to deliver his message. He eyed the crowd in silence for a moment, then said, “We are not all present.

“There is one among us who does not bow his head to the will of God. He openly defies the Maker by refusing to attend His services and persists in praying to a false God.

“We cannot tolerate his presence any longer.

“Nor can we tolerate those who sit among us, but are not with us in the spirit . . . ”

Jan felt Dumezil’s eyes on him. His muscles tightened, readying for any action that might be needed. His eyes flitted here and there, weighing possibilities. Marcel Damle looked scared but was trying to remain inconspicuous. Henri was holding Marie’s hand possessively, as if unwilling to let anything separate them. Sweat stood out on Valikili’s dark face.

“The time has come for a reckoning. God saw fit to separate us from the rest of the human race, to bring us here to this place, to let us make what we will of it. It is a cold world, and harsh. Was it God’s will to hurl us into torment? No! It was a testing. We have stood firm in our faith and we have conquered. Yet that is not enough. Did God cast us into this place for no purpose? You know He did not. He separated us from the heathen portion of our race to purify us and make us whole before him. We have an entire planet set before us, a barren, inhospitable planet which we can make over into a new Eden. And God will show the way toward the making of a new Eden. He will be with us.

“But only . . . only . . .

“Only if we first purify ourselves in His sight. Who is with God?”

They shouted in unison. Jan tried to shout, for self-preservation, but the cry stuck in his throat.

“Who is with Him?” They shouted again.

“Who will purify themselves before Him?”

Jan knew what was coming.

“Who will take a hand to purify God’s community?”

Chapter 7

When the third melt came, the colonists moved to the lake. It had taken all of the patriarch’s powers of persuasion to force the move and still they were reluctant. Four barges had been built and several huge rafts of logs. The women and belongings went in the former with a portion of the men while the remainder of the men guided the rafts down and beached them near the palisade. All this was done early in the melt, and when the herds came in earnest the men had already dragged the now empty barges back upstream to hunt the year’s meat supply.

Three weeks later the hunt was completed and the meat stored away in a new permafrost cellar. Then one group of the colonists began to construct permanent dwellings within the stockade from the timber rafts, while another began the back-breaking excavation of irrigation canals for a farm. Seeds were ready at hand, lying dormant in the desiccated soil, waiting for the next melt. River water rushed in some weeks later to provide an artificial melt. With Jan’s point proved, the colonists worked in earnest digging irrigation ditches against the next melt.

The snow came, bringing a halt to the digging, and the entire colony turned to the production of shelters. Like the upper colony’s, the first shelters at the lake were crude, but one substantial building was erected, a combination city hall and worship house. In the coming years the crude shelters would be replaced with solid homes.

Three months after the melt, Jan, Henri Staal, and Nur Mohammet hiked to the upper colony with a timber-cutting crew, then took the landing boat up to the Lydia.

Captain Childe met them with tears in his eyes. He had not seen another human face for more than a year, but he refused their entreaties that he descend to the planet. They toured the ship with him, marveling at the hydroponic setup he had built to sustain his life and noted the futile efforts he still made to repair the computer.

“You see,” he said, “I have rebuilt the logic unit of the navigation section. We may not know where we are, since the memory banks were destroyed, but we can leave here now to search out a better planet or merely to explore.”

Jan could not answer the captain, not having known him well, so it was Henri Staal who convinced the man that the colonists would never leave their new home.

They stayed a week, though their mission could have been accomplished in half that time. When they left, they carried makeshift nuclear devices jury rigged from the by-products of the Lydia’s drive unit. They landed at the passes north of the lower colony and blasted them shut, cutting off the herds from the plains near the lake where the colonists would establish their farms. Then they lifted off one last time in a shallow flight that landed them near the lower colony.

That night Henri Staal radioed to the Lydia and told Captain Childe of their success.

“Henri,” Childe asked, “are you content to stay there? If you had the choice of going with me in the Lydia to explore would you do so or would you stay where you are?”

“Why, stay, of course. What is the point of exploration now. We could not relay what we found to the Federation and it will be many generations before we even explore and populate this planet.”

“Don’t you feel the need to explore for its own sake?”

“Perhaps I did once, but no more.”

After they had signed off, Henri stepped out of the landing boat and looked up to where the Lydia hung in orbit. Sudden fire lanced the heavens. Staal stood transfixed, then ran back up the ramp and tried to raise the Lydia, but there was no response.

When he went outside again the heavens were empty. Lydia had gone exploring; Captain Childe had returned to his life’s work. Someday he would die and the Lydia would continue on whatever course he had set for her, endlessly seeking in the loneliness of space.

Anne lay beyond. She was dead. She was naked. She had been raped.

I dropped to my knees, tears streaming down my cheeks. Now I would have to wrap those two pitiful bodies and load them. Later I would prepare them for burial. I would dig the grave; I would throw the dirt upon them.

Major Bass’s hand was on my shoulder then and he drew me away from that haunted place. Some of his soldiers took the bodies away.

***

That night they struck the collar from my neck and the next morning Major Bass saw me in his office. I had not been there since the fifth day of my capture.

“I’m sending you offworld with the next supply ship.”

I was not surprised. “To a prison planet?”

He waved the notion aside. “Of course not. The Federation does not punish children for being their father’s sons. You will be sent to Aleph base for schooling.”

I said nothing, ready for a trap.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“What price is this favor? Are you trying to bribe me into betraying my father?”

He went to the map that covered one wall of his office and pointed directly to our home base. “Two weeks ago we raided here. Your father escaped with some of his men, but they are in entirely new territory now. There is nothing you could tell us of importance, even if you were willing to do so.”

“I am not.”

“I would hope that you are not. I respect loyalty.”

“Why then, damn you! Why have you punished me these last months if not to break my spirit – to get me to tell what I know.”

He took a long time answering. “When you came to me, my son had just been killed. Had you been an adult, I would probably have executed you. I, too, am not immune to revenge. But your youth made me think of my own son and what he might have become in your place. In memory of him I decided to see if there was a man worth salvaging under that fanatic’s shell. I was right; there was such a man. Had you been older, my tactics would not have worked.

“You have not been under punishment – I have been educating you.”

***

Jan never came to like Major Bass, nor did Bass ever come to like Jan, but their strange relationship persisted and they came to respect one another. When Bass rose to colonel, he supported Jan’s bid for Scout training. Had he not pulled strings, Jan’s background would have kept him out of Federation service. For that Jan owed him fully as much as for his harsh education on Hallam.

Why could he not marry Angi? Put simply – fear.

Fear for what the future held for them both. No one can fully gauge the depths of fanaticism who has not been a fanatic himself.

*****

I was never a fanatic, quite, but I had some of the certainty that a fanatic has. I grew up as a southern Southern Baptist, sure that the Bible was the pure and perfect word of God. If the Bible said it, it was so. If the Bible commanded something, that thing had to be done. No questions were allowed.

I lost my certainty, and I am glad to see it gone. That was as close to fanaticism as I ever want to come.

The labels had been reversed. For two hours I had been reading the Pertoskan Monomythos and had not known the difference.

I resolved to read neither thereafter, but the fascination of the flittering words in an otherwise barren room drew me back. For three days no one came near except to feed me and at the end of that time I had read both Monomythoses twice and realized for the first time how tiny were the differences between them.

We went on patrol then as we had done so many times before. I had been a prisoner five months by that time and my fourteenth birthday had come and gone. The first night we stopped at an isolated farmhouse. Major Bass tried to persuade the man and his wife to leave for the valley, warning of the danger from Dannelite raiders, but he would not go. It was his land, the man said, and no one could take it from him.

He had two daughters, one about the age Jennie would have been, sixteen or perhaps a year older, and the other about six. As I sat chained to a tree, apart from the family and the soldiers, the younger approached in shy wonderment.

“Why are you chained?” I did not reply, for I had cultivated silence as the only answer due to Bass and his allies. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Then why are you tied up?” She turned to her sister who was approaching, “Anne, why is this man tied up? He didn’t do anything.”

The elder sister pulled her back. “Yes, he did, Honey; he’s the son of the man who leads the Dannelites.”

“Is that any reason to treat him like a dog and tie him up?”

The question seemed to trouble the older sister, and, somewhat puzzled, she looked at me. “Now, Honey, he isn’t just the son of that man. He was a raider himself. He raided houses like ours and killed people like Daddy and Mummy.”

The younger sister turned to me, big-eyed and unbelieving. “Did you really do that, mister?”

I opened my mouth to say, “No,” then closed it again and turned away.

Later, when the soldiers had eaten and had given me my ration of dried meat, the girls returned with a bowl of fresh milk. The elder sister held little Honey back and extended the bowl to me, carefully not coming within reach. I took it and drank gratefully, but her reticence burned me. “What do you think I’m going to do, pull you down and strangle you on the spot?”

She squatted on her heels and watched me drink.

“Maybe. Maybe not, but maybe. How am I to know what you are capable of doing? Some of your kind have done worse.”

“Then why give me this milk?”

She gestured toward Honey, squatting big-eyed some distance away. “Because I want her to learn kindness.”

***

Two days later we returned to the farm after an unsuccessful scouting mission. The barns and house were gone, leaving only ash and embers to mark their passing. The man who had refused to leave his land lay sprawled in the yard. His wife lay in the doorway of the house, so badly burned as to be unrecognizable. The soldiers fanned out searching for the daughters.

Major Bass came to where I was tethered, his face more pale and angry than was usual, and dragged me along behind him. They lay beyond the bushes where the grass and flowers made a soft bed. Honey was crumpled, her back stained with dried, blackened blood. Anne lay beyond. She was dead. She was naked. She had been raped.

He came around the desk with speed amazing for a man so heavy and struck me down before I could dodge.

Three days later a steel collar with attached chain was riveted around my neck and I was led out and padlocked to the dashboard of a personnel skimmer. The officer who had interrogated me sat beside me and two privates sat forward, one piloting, one manning the machine rifle. What the officer had in mind, I could not guess.

We toured the valley where the Patrol base was situated, and I saw the blackened ruins we had made of once prosperous farms. I exulted in the destruction. It was not more than the Pertoskans deserved for driving us from our lands and killing off my sister and my friends.

The officer said nothing until the end of the tour, then asked, “Are you proud of what your people have done.”

“Yes!”

***

Thereafter, hardly a day passed that I was not escorted somewhere to view the destruction we Dannelites were perpetrating. I worked beside a Pertoskan whose house had been burned. For a week I labored with him to rebuild it, thinking all the while that if I escaped I would return and burn it again. Whenever a Pertoskan was killed, I dug the grave, wrapped the body, and watched the mourners as they trooped past. I spaded the dirt back into the grave.

At first I was proud of the destruction; then I reached a stage where I could no longer be proud, though I still accepted the destruction as necessary to free Hallam. After a while, it became apparent that Hallam would never again be a Dannelite paradise and I took solace in revenge.

After months of uncounted bodies, burned fields, and destroyed homes, I no longer wanted revenge. I had become numb.

At night I was locked away in the tiny cubicle. It was not imprisonment or punishment – it was to keep the Pertoskans from reaching the son of their persecutor.

Whenever a new raid occurred, I rode with Major Bass, my personal demon, to view the carnage. My pride lasted for two such missions. Thereafter I was merely dumb and resentful, moving as directed, bundling up the shattered bodies to be taken down to the valley for burial.

Sometimes we would sweep up the valleys on a skimmer and Bass would question me on this topic or that, trying to wring tactical information out of me. In this he was not successful.

On one such mission he turned to me and asked, “Do you think me cruel in my treatment of you?” When I did not answer, he went on, “Remember this, Jan; when your father stops butchering innocent people, you will no longer have to bury them.”

In my cell that night, I found a new addition to his arsenal of tortures. A technician had set up a reader so that it ran continuous spools of the Pertoskan and Danneline Monomythoses side by side. At first I ignored it, since it was cased in clear plastic and I could do it no harm. Then I thought that I would fool him by reading only the scriptures that had been my companions since infancy and deriving comfort from them. For two hours I read until something seemed wrong. The scriptures suddenly took a new slant and I realized that they had become foreign to me. I glanced at the parallel tape and realized that I had been fooled. The labels had been reversed. For two hours I had been reading the Pertoskan Monomythos and had not known the difference.

*****

No doubt many of you will recognize the source of some of this. During WWII Kurt Vonnegut had similar experiences. I had read Cat’s Cradle in high school, hated it, and avoided his other works, but I was aware of his background.

A high-explosive shell hit the spot where I had been standing. Everything went black.

And was black when I woke, but of a different kind. I felt suffocated and found myself bound. For a moment I panicked, then lucidity returned and I explored my bonds. Only I wasn’t bound as I had thought; rather my torso was encased in a hard plastic shell, either bandages or a cast – or both. I stood up, supported myself until the first dizziness had passed, then explored in the darkness. I had been lying on a pallet in a room no larger than a closet with cold, metallic walls and one door. There were no windows and no other facilities. After a while I lay down again and slept.

Light wakened me again and two men entered my cubicle. The elder seemed kindly enough, but his young, armed companion had the look of hate. Had he been alone I do not think I would have fared well.

“How do you feel?” the elder asked.

I shrugged. He ignored my reticence and took my pulse, then passed over me with a medical sensor, so I concluded he was a doctor. “What happened to me?”

“You were struck by the blast from an explosive and cracked three ribs, presumably when you hit the ground. This,” he tapped the plastic corset, “is a cast. In a month you will never know you were hurt.” He turned to his companion, “Conduct him to the head, then bring him back here, and provide food and water.”

After that the lights cycled on and off at regular intervals which corresponded to the day outside. I was fed, watered, doctored, and ignored for four days. On the fifth day I was escorted to an office and left there to face a Patrol officer.

I seated myself and said nothing. Let the soldier make the first move. He was somewhat older than my father, with the first hints of gray in his hair. He stared at me a long time before speaking.

“How old are you, son?”

“Old enough.”

“No doubt. How old is old enough?”

“Thirteen. ”

He nodded and made a job of lighting his pipe.

“What’s your name?” I said nothing. “You are Jan Andrax, son of Daniel Andrax, are you not?” Again I said nothing. “We had some local people identify you while you were still unconscious, you see. We would like to get your cooperation, in hopes of ending this pointless war. Your father can stay up in those hills and continue to wreak havoc for quite some time. I won’t lie to you, son; our job isn’t easy. But we will win. Eventually, we will win.”

I spat on his rug. Anger flared on his face but he controlled it. “If you will help us, we can save many lives, not only Pertoskan but your people’s as well. It’s time for your father to stop fighting a losing battle.”

Then we were both silent and he merely stared at me. For a few moments I matched his stare, then turned away, shamed by my weakness.

“Damn!” It seemed as if he were talking to himself, not me. “How can they do this to one so young?”

“I’m old enough to make you bastards bleed!”

“Yes, you certainly are. And inordinately proud of the fact.” He leaned forward, “Son . . .”

“I’m not your son!”

“No!” He struck the table with his fist. “No, you aren’t, dammit. My son was killed in that ambush.”

“Good!”

He came around the desk with speed amazing for a man so heavy and struck me down before I could dodge.