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.

What my father thought of the changes in me, I did not know. As always he was aloof, brooding now about the loss of his lands, his position, and his daughter.

In those days Papa was often tied up with matters of administration. We made our headquarters in a cluster of log houses we took in a high valley. Every day more Dannelites straggled in, each influx fanning our angers with new tales of terror. That we also spread terror was my pride; only later could I see the whole affair in perspective.

Even when Papa could not go, Sabine and I went raiding. We stole stock and food, clothing, arms and ammunition, and sometimes we found ourselves in firefights. I watched men go down before my gun and heard them scream from cover. Many of the former were probably just wounded and some of the latter probably died. It was impossible to assess our successes and failures.

We survived.

Somehow the Pertoskans manage to maintain secrecy about our war. Then as now, there is no fast long-range communication except by ship. Synapse technology can send solid bodies but not messages. For a year we had the field to ourselves and mercilessly slaughtered each other for the glory of God, but eventually a ship landed and carried away rumors of rebels in the hills. The Patrol ship that investigated found more than rebels and returned for reinforcements.

When the Patrol peacekeeping force arrived I was a seasoned veteran of thirteen. The Pertoskans were subdued at once since they were tied to the towns. We simply changed enemies and kept on fighting.

More time passed and we were severely pressed, forced out of the foothills and into the high mountains. Food was scarce and ammunition could no longer be had at all when our scouts brought word of a detachment moving into our area. We laid an ambush.

They came up through a long valley and tumed toward our camp, cutting through the narrow ravine where we were poised. They had two civilian scouts, Pertoskans, ordered to duty but relishing a chance to take their revenge on us. We let them come until they were directly below us and opened fire. The Pertoskans went down together and the Patrol went to earth like the trained soldiers they were, leaving three of their number behind.

We waited then, having a commanding position, and kept them pinned down. The light duty half-track growled forward and to the left until it jammed between two trees, its driver slumped over the controls. Sabine and I slipped down to recover the supplies it carried.

We were fools. We should never have stayed there after our first burst of fire, but we were unused to fighting a modern force. Sabine and I worked our way down, taking our time, and were sorting through the half-track’s contents when we heard a strange humming. Sabine knew immediately what we were facing. He hit the bushes, shouting for me to follow, but I turned to see what was coming.

It was a silver bullet, whizzing across the treetops at a hundred kilometers an hour, ducted fans thrusting down the air which supported it, flattening the vegetation as it went. For an almost fatal moment I paused, then leaped for cover. A high-explosive shell hit the spot where I had been standing. Everything went black.

A conflict based on the doctrinal differences between the two Monist denominations did develop, and Baylor became the Pertoskan champion.

It has been suggested that all of the warfare between the two sects was a result of political pretensions given the guise of a holy war. This is not true. I knew my father better than anyone, both then and later; he was a truly religious man in both the best and worst senses of the word. He felt that the search for God’s word among the complex and contradictory lessons of the “Great Religions of Earth” was a holy task, one that had been concluded correctly, once and for all time, in the Danneline Monomythos. He would not abide attacks upon it, or Baylor’s attempts to have his version of the Monomythos elevated to official status. That their secular pretensions also clashed was a strictly secondary consideration.

***

When the war broke out there were eleven thousand colonists on Hallam, about a thousand of them living in a cluster of villages called Hallam, which was also the capital “city” and starport. There Baylor and my father fought as they returned from services in their respective churches. By that night the entire town was fighting and half of it was ablaze.

We abandoned our post that night and took to the hills. Most of the first-shippers had been Dannelites and the Pertoskans who came later were of a different breed that had gravitated to the towns. In Hallam City we were outnumbered three to one. In fact, my father had threatened to abandon the house and move into the outback for years; only his politicking had kept him tied to the place.

Hallam was set on the floodplain of a minor river near its mouth and backed by a rugged coastal mountain range. We eased out of the house some hours before dawn and were at the base of the mountains by sunrise. There was no pursuit.

We began a guerrilla war, slipping down from the mountains to raid, pillage, and burn. I went on my first raid within a month of the outbreak of hostilities. Papa, Mr. Thoms, and Sabine Conners slipped down to a Pertoskan farm in hopes of stealing burros. I remained with Papa’s automatic pistol on a hillock overlooking the house; I was to lay down covering fire should they be spotted. No one actually expected me to hit anybody, just to keep their heads down.

They were waiting for us; how they knew that we were coming I never did find out. As our men approached the corrals, the Pertoskans fired from ambush. All three went down. I was so startled by the suddenness and shaken by the roar of gunfire that I forgot to fire. Then one of the Pertoskans stood up, laughing, and I shot him three times. He crumpled like a ragdoll.

Then there was only silence.

Several minutes later I saw movement in the bushes outside the Pertoskan house and emptied the rest of the clip. Somebody screamed. I reloaded and waited.

After ten minutes the bushes below me rustled. I covered the area and waited until Papa’s voice reached me. He was dragging Sabine Conners; Mr. Thoms was dead.

That was the beginning.

Any boy on the frontier becomes an efficient woodsman and is tough in mind and body. At twelve I had drawn blood, though I am no longer proud of that achievement. In the months that followed I became a hardened and highly efficient guerilla. My size allowed me to slip into places a grown man would not have dared, and the revolver I captured some weeks into our exile made me as deadly as any adult. What my father thought of the changes in me, I did not know. As always he was aloof, brooding now about the loss of his lands, his position, and his daughter.

Margaret was all dry-eyed business. She looked down at Mama and said, “I saw Jennie. She’s dead.”

It was a flat pronouncement, with no more emotion than a discussion of the weather. At first it didn’t sink in, then Mama began to cry, open-eyed, open-mouthed, a mad, rising sound. I shut it out, shut out my sister’s memory, and fled down toward the fighting.

I rounded the comer and looked out across the village square, keeping down. Bodies littered the ground. Some were twisted grotesquely or bore visible wounds. Those I could accept. It was the ones who lay quietly as if in repose, their wounds hidden, that bothered me most. I knew them all, first-shippers and newcomers alike, both Dannelites and Pertoskans.

A group of men leaped up and charged my position.

I swung Papa’s gun around then recognized Papa in the lead. Dust danced near their feet and I swung back toward the snipers, fired, hit nothing. They broke over me and took cover behind the same overturned cart I had sheltered in.

Papa’s face was smeared and bloody. He spared me only one comment, “Reload, dammit!” Shocked back to attention, I did so.

We waited behind the cart. Occasionally one of us or one of them tried a shot, most of which went wild. One of theirs burned Sabine Conners’ shoulder. Probably we did no more damage than that.

After a while my father turned to me and asked, “Are your mother and the children safe?”

“Mother and Alan are at the house.”

“Where’s Jennie?”

I gestured, “Out there . . . dead.”

For a moment he said nothing, then he leaped up and fired, releasing rounds in a single roar of sound until his automatic was empty. He screamed. Three shots came from the enemy; two missed. The third hit the cart just before Papa and exploded a board into a hundred splinters, all of which hit him. He went down, cursing and bleeding wildly. Sabine and I were on him in a moment, but his wounds, though numerous, were superficial. We caught him up and retreated to the house.

***

Damn this cold planet for dredging up memories. Still, I could probably have forgiven, could probably react to these people around me as people, not simply as Monists, if there were no sequel to the memory. But in the end it is not what happens to us, but what we do ourselves, that affects us most.

***

Daniel Andrax, my father, came to Hallam’s World on the first ship, worked hard, built a place for himself and his family, and aided in the building of the community. He proposed and largely supported the drive to raise money for the importation of fruit trees. He fought cannys – deadly, persistent predators – and was in the forefront of the drive to bring in the dogs that finally finished them off.

Daniel Andrax was a deeply religious man, a Danneline Monist and a minister of that faith. He was a brilliant leader, bath religious and secular, a good provider, and a good father. He was also a zealot with little time for opinions other than his own, but that is not an uncommon failing.

He was not unlike Marcel Dumezil.

A decade after Hallam’s World was settled, the second shipload of colonists arrived. Natural increase had already doubled the population of the original colony. For the Ministers of Colonization this is the prime index of success, and in the next decade twelve more colony ships arrived. In the influx Daniel Andrax could have easily lost his preeminence, but he did not.

A conflict based on the doctrinal differences between the two Monist denominations did develop, and Baylor became the Pertoskan champion.

Then Baylor struck my father – or my father struck Baylor. I have never been quite sure who struck the first blow, nor are my impressions of the melee that followed clear. In seconds the entire village was engaged in a general brawl. I rushed to my father’s aid and was promptly smashed down, whether by friend or foe I am not sure. He and Baylor stood toe to toe trading blows with their staves until Baylor fell. I remember staggering to my feet and being caught up in my father’s arms as he retreated with me.

He dropped me to the dirt floor inside our house, and I sat holding my head while he and my mother argued. He was rummaging in his chest, that same chest he had carried two decades earlier when he emigrated. I could make little sense of my mother’s words for she was hysterical. I stood, swayed, leaned against a table and watched as my father pulled out the automatic pistol he had taken as plunder in some war. He checked its load, drew back the cocking bar and strode out. I can see his face as if it were before me and even now, as then, the expression is unreadable.

He left the house at a run and I heard the bullroar of a heavy rifle. My father was not the only one to have gone for better weapons. Then I heard a scream and it went on and on, high-pitched, mad, the cry of a woman bereaved. More shots echoed, different pitches distinguishing different weapons, some of which I recognized. I heard more screams as I staggered outside. Buildings intervened between me and the fighting, but I could see flames where someone’s house was burning. My mother caught my arm and held me back.

The flames had spread to other buildings, or were being spread. Alan crouched beside my mother; he was ten. I realized that Jennie was not with us. Someone ran up our street, staggered, and fell. Then he began to crawl forward, and when he raised his head I recognized him. Mr. Thoms! I broke away and ran to him. He had been shot through the leg and was bleeding badly. I stopped the wound and helped him drag himself inside the house. Wounds were nothing new to me, even then, for Hallam was still a frontier world.

His face was white from shock and loss of blood.

“Anna,” he said, gripping my mother’s arm, “it’s terrible. Those damned new people . . . ” He broke off, too angry to continue. The smell of smoke had reached us now. Firing was sporadic, but unrelenting. Apparently both sides had taken cover to snipe at one another. Two women herded a group of children into sight, heading toward us. Our house was one of the town’s original structures, of full hewn logs set on a mound with an open field of fire, a relic of first ship days when the cannys had not yet been killed off. It was apparent that they intended to take shelter here. I took down Papa’s single-shot hunting rifle and loaded it, cursing myself for not having remembered it sooner, and went down to help.

The women were Mrs. Thoms and her daughter Margaret, but the children were a mixed lot, her own and a round dozen from other families. She saw her man as she entered the house and ran to him with tears of relief on her face. Margaret was all dry-eyed business, herding the children to an inner room and threatening dire punishment if they whimpered or left its security. Then she came back and walked to where Mama and Alan were crouched. Her face was white; she seemed in greater shock than her father, though there was no wound on her. She looked down at Mama and said, “I saw Jennie. She’s dead.”

Chapter 6
Interlude: Incident on Hallam’s World

“Andrax, you can’t seriously contend that crucifixion is a viable part of the Monomythos. It is a barbaric concept, not a true part of the Word.” The speaker was angry, as was my father’s reply.

“It is not my place to advise God on what is and is not proper. Crucifixion, the self-sacrifice of God for Man, is a part of a vast array of religions from Zulis to the Christ. Who are we to throw it out?”

They stood face to face, poised like fighting cocks, two small men with pretensions to power, each secure in his own theology. This I know now, but then I only saw that my father was threatened by the heretic Baylor and that, insofar as he was threatened, I was likewise threatened. I was twelve years old.

I remember the incident clearly still. It was the last argument that Baylor and my father had. I had been schooled in the Danneline Monomythos and I believed it implicitly. There was no room for doubt in my small, ordered world.

The sun was warm; flowers were blooming in the village square on the imported fruit trees that were our village’s special pride. The grass was green after a long winter of brown and the pond at the base of the muddy main street was clear blue again, having shed its winter coat of ice. All these details are made more poignant by the intervening years and the comparison they offer to this cold hell-planet. Hallam, or Hallam’s World as it is often called, is a prime property.

A crowd gathered as the argument continued, each man gesturing with the staff he carried to kill the poisonous reptiles then prevalent. Baylor’s supporters were almost exclusively newcomers to Hallam, the company of a ship that had planeted only two years back. They were followers of the Pertoskan Monomythos, demons to me then. Now I recognize that the difference in doctrine between their people and mine was small.

When Louis Dumezil collated the earth’s religions into one grand scheme, he had hoped to put an end to religious persecution by deriving a universal religion. Scholars are uncertain today whether or not he believed in his teachings himself; it is a common theory among historians that he was not a religious man, merely a man of peace working through religion to attain his ends. If that is so, he failed miserably, for there has never been a more fractious group than the Universal Monists.

By the time the argument had continued for ten minutes, most of the village had gathered, each group of adherents separating from the other. My father was red-faced; Baylor had gone white. Each was gesturing, shouting, cutting off his opponent, making personal slurs. Then Baylor struck my father – or my father struck Baylor. I have never been quite sure who struck the first blow.

*****

I wrote Jandrax in 1976, less than a year after completing my first master’s thesis. It shows. I won’t ever rewrite Jandrax, but if I did, the end of the third paragraph is an example of what needs help.

This I know now, but then I only saw that my father was threatened by the heretic Baylor and that, insofar as he was threatened, I was likewise threatened.

If I were rewriting, I would replace it with:

And what threatened my father, threatened me.

Ah, the joys of hindsight.