Hubbard, L. Ron (17 page)

"I've got Hogarthy below," said the excited Bulger. "All the people we met said it was him!"

"Good," said the Lieutenant, glancing up from a pile of documents. "Shoot him."

"Yessir," replied Bulger, speeding away.

For years the soldier government ran smoothly, holding sway over England and Wales. A steady, calculating hand dealt adequately with the redistribution of the land and rehabilitation of the towns, for what war had failed to do, the Communists had done by way of wrecking any semblance of social system.

There were seven hundred and fifty thousand people within the Lieutenant's boundaries and, if fully half of these were under twenty, the restoration of central power was only made the easier by making old forms not only obsolete but also unknown.

The government took its taxes in tenths of production and upon the basis of stores held against emergency was able to issue a scrip which was valued as being backed by food. Government police were maintained by their posts and any political abuses were quickly stopped because they could be quickly reported.

Most of the work was directed at the land, very little of it toward manufacturing beyond the clearing out of certain sites to improve the appearance of the country. Youth was avid in its studies and though most of the libraries had been burned by bombs and Commies, there was still enough printed data to supply the working background of a very elementary kind of civilization.

The first great problem which jolted the Lieutenant was the amazing intricacy of industry. At first there was some talk of opening a clothing factory, but this led to the necessity of repairing a foundry, which meant that a smelter had to be run, which finally ended, not in the field with flax, but in the mines with iron and coal. It was given up. A few handicrafters had been able to set up some hand looms which were fairly efficient, even though built out of bedsteads and rifles and tractor parts.

Three districts swiftly came to be employed for clothing and blankets, and as the government took its tenth and, in turn, made it possible for the weavers and tailors to eat and keep warm, everyone was happy.

Of building stone there was no lack. But the forests, destroyed far back by incendiary bombs along with the cities, furnished nothing but scrub saplings. And so youth became clever with stone.

A treaty was early concluded with the man who styled himself King of Scotland, for animals were to be had there but gunpowder and coal were not. Hence, a rather interesting trade was begun by sea.

The Thames' influence was again felt upon England. Boats, of sorts, were to be had in abundance and these, rigged out of old books on sail and only ballasted by their ruined, starved engines, began to creep up and down that waterway and even out and up the coast.

The happiness of a country is directly dependent upon the business of that country. And here everyone had seven times more projects to accomplish than he could ever hope to complete in his lifetime, and there was the grand goal of making a destroyed country live again. Everyone, therefore, was happy. And there was no worry whatever about politics.

The Lieutenant sat in audience for four hours each day, his fatigue cap on the back of his head, his elbows on his battered desk and his chin cupped attentively in his hands. He seemed oblivious of the fact that he was against a background used by half the kings of England. He would listen to a young farmer's rambling account of how things were going up in Norfolk without any indication of the fact that agriculture bored him to the point of fainting. And he would sift out the problems and solve them without much effort, and the farmer would go away happy and content that the government, for once, was in the hands of the grandest fellow alive.

To the Lieutenant would come a woman who claimed she had been hardly used by the sergeant-major court of her district, in that the sergeant major would not compel her husband to take her best friend also to wife despite the fact that there was too much work for just one and that her friend was not needed in her present home. The Lieutenant would listen to the husband's protest that he doubted he could handle two women when he could barely manage one's uncertainties. And the Lieutenant, smiling, might say, like as not: "Snyder, I regret to say the deed is done. You have just been married to a second wife. Make a note of that, Mawkey." And Mawkey would grin and write it all in a book, and the farmer, now that the thing was done, determined to be cheerful about it if the Lieutenant thought it was right.

Only two things found the Lieutenant swift and savage in his action. The reiteration by some person that the B.C.P had assigned him such and such or had decreed thus and so. Having discovered that the B.C.P., like all such governments, had manhandled affairs for the benefit of a few yes-men, the population was usually reduced by one before the hour was out. The other was discourtesy to a soldier who had served on the Continent.

In the early part of his first winter, the Lieutenant had sent Bulger and Weasel with a small command across the channel with written invitations to all field officers to return speedily with their commands. Bulger and Weasel had spent three months on the task, traveling at lightning speed and shortening their work by making every command contacted a party to the message's circulation. By the following spring most of the B.E.F had come back. A few, of course, had founded their own spheres in Europe and would not give them up but these were very rare, for almost all the officers and men wished to return home and hailed the Lieutenant as a savior for having accomplished the feat.

Bringing many additional nationalities with them, the B.E.E returned. From Archangel, Syria, Spain, Poland, Estonia and Turkey, all summer the detachments continued to arrive. They numbered, in all, nearly seven thousand men and one hundred and ninety-four officers.

The process of elimination which had gone on for nearly thirty years had been very harsh but very thorough. No man without knowledge of men had lived. No officer unfit to command had continued to command. Death had been the ultimate reward for foolishness in any direction. Thus they were an iron crew, those officers, able to gauge any situation by its true values and with neither attention nor patience for any slightest attempts to swerve from the issue. The troops alone might have been said to have suffered by the exodus from Europe. For they were not overly clever at construction, schooled only in destruction, and though nearly all of them were assimilated by the National Police, saving those few kept about the officers as guards of honor, the men were very morose for a while at the prospect of inaction.

Soon, however, the spirit of construction came to them and they saw what had to be done and helped do it. In view of what the Lieutenant had done at G.H.Q. and to the B.C.R, thus avenging all of them, they were anxious to please him, the more so when they came to know him. Ruthlessly they suppressed the brigandism, which had arisen in the back countries.

Zealously they expedited commerce. And, which was a strange paradox, they were utterly merciless with thieves.

The officers were given great grants of land for themselves and wide districts to administer-and for this there were few enough of them. They did not abuse their rights and powers because there was no reason. Not ten followers could have been found in all the land for a project which involved removing the Lieutenant. Hence, an aristocracy was founded on the basis of skill and leadership. And it was very far from a fascism, for money and military were not combined. There was no money as such beyond the food currency. And making money for its own sake has always been a thing which a real soldier finds hard to understand. Additionally, there was no need for indirect and cunning controls over the populace. The leaders were there walking among their people, serving more than they were served. In such a way were the first nobilities of antiquity founded.

The agricultural problems which arose from the infestation of the land with insects had solved itself Certain plants, like the few remaining people, were impervious to the insects and only these were planted. This had been started three or four years before the Lieutenant had come and by now it was arriving at a goal of extinction of plant pests.

Thus, there was plenty of food and warmth and work for all, and the country settled down into cheerful activity, forgetting its wounds and its hates.

For who, with a full body, can talk earnestly of revolt and sedition?

Hogarthy's corpse had been borne on the tide to the sea. The Continent was licking its wounds and wanted only to be left alone. The King of Scotland was quick to send gifts when Hanley had taken the surviving soldier Scots home with their tales of the Lieutenant.

For years affairs progressed in even tenor and then, one day, a boat was reported off Sheerness by the government at Blinker Towers.

The Lieutenant was in audience with a major from up Hereford way and was so deeply engrossed that he did not immediately hear what Weasel said.

Weasel, at the risk of being insistent, repeated it and popped his heels together to demand attention.

"Sir, there's a boat. A motor vessel. It come into the estuary about twenty minutes ago off Sheerness and dropped its hook."

"Well?" said the Lieutenant.

"A boat, sir. A big one. Big as these wrecks in the river and bigger. And it runs by engines just like our tanks used to in the old days."

The Lieutenant dismissed the major with a motion of his hand. "Any report on its flag?"

"Yessir," said Weasel, mollified now that he had his officer's attention.

"It's got horizontal bars, red and white, according to the message, and a field up in the corner with a bunch of white stars."

The Lieutenant looked at the window in thought. "I can't remember any such flag. And we've no books on it, either. Weasel, run down to the barracks and see if any of the troops there know of it."

"Yessir. You think it's bad, sir?"

"How do I know? Be quick!'

The Lieutenant sat down at his desk and stared unseeing at the documents there which awaited his signature. He had a chilly premonition like that time they had stormed the fortresses outside Berlin, when only himself and his colonel had come back with less than five hundred men out of six thousand. He shivered. Strange it was to feel this way, to remember suddenly that a man had nerves. He picked up his pen and then laid it down. It couldn't be cold in here, not with the mid-August sun beating down outside.

Weasel came back. "Old Chipper knows it, sir. He says he saw it once on an American vessel in Bordeaux just after the war began. He says he was just a kid, but he said the flag was so pretty he couldn't help remembering!'

"And what nation is it?"

"The Union States, sir. I never heard of it myself."

"Union States!" The Lieutenant stood up and took another turn around the room. "He means the United States of America. I recall studying the tactics of Robert E. Lee at Rugby when he was fighting that country. The United States of America
¯
the country that started the atom bombing
¯
"

He sat down at his desk and dismissed Weasel and then, alone in that frowning old throne room, he tried to think clearly. It was a strange thing not to be able to. There was some sort of conflict in his mind that he could not disentangle. He reached for his solitaire deck and dealt out a hand. But he did not play it.

Every part of his being told him that he had to act swiftly. But he was a soldier and, as a soldier, he primarily thought of repulsing an invasion.

And now, having become, perforce, a statesman, he knew that there was a chance that this ship merely wanted to establish trade like that he had with Scotland.

Because of his own victory on the Thames, he knew well how weak it was. He had caused several guns to be laboriously repaired and a few hundred heavy shells to be literally carved out of metal dug up from old bombardments. Nothing could come up the Thames unless he passed the word. Why this spirit of war which mounted so steadily in him?

Weasel came in. "Sir, another message. I just picked it off the Wapping relay tower. The vessel is landing a small party at Sheerness in a boat which is also driven by motor and very swiftly. Fast as plane, the message said, sit."

"Keep me informed," said the Lieutenant.

He sat where he was, not touching the food Mawkey brought at tea time.

Weasel came down from the upper battlement. He had a written message this time, handed him by the girl who was on duty there, for Weasel could not write, even though he could read the Gravesend Tower before Wapping could get it down.

To the Lieutenant. From Commanding Officer Sheerness Battery, Via Blinker, helio.

U.S.S. New York anchored this afternoon and landed captain of vessel and twenty marines and three civilians. States pacific intentions.

Wishes permission of interview with the Lieutenant.

He read the message through twice. He could find no reason to refuse such a request, though he knew that he should. But would it do any harm to talk to them?

"Send word that 'permission is granted," said the Lieutenant. "Wait. Send word to Swinburne, wherever he is, that he's needed here. And wait again, Weasel. Have the adjutant issue Order A."

Weasel was startled, not to have Order A issued, which was the manning of all guns and garrisons, but to hear a note of tired kindness in the Lieutenant's voice. Another might not have detected it. But Weasel, who had seen many officers face defeat and death, recognized it for what it was.