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energetically.
"I commend the group leaders for an excellent job, and Sergeant Oliver for
choosing them. By bringing this off, we have bought not only the allegiance of
the greater part of the camp, but time as well. Each chow call after this
should run a little easier, a little smoother, each become a real-life
practice drill for the next.
"And make no mistake, this is a military exercise. We re at war again. We ve
already suckered the Cetagandans into breaking their carefully calculated
routine and making a counter-move. We acted. They reacted. Strange as it may
all seem to you, we had the offensive advantage.
"Now we start planning our next strategies. I want your thinking on what the
next Cetagandan challenge will be."
Actually, I
want you thinking, period
, "So much for the sermon - Commandant Tris, take over." Miles forced himself
to sit down cross-
legged, yielding the floor to his chosen one whether she wanted it or not. He
reminded himself that Tris had been a field officer, not a staff officer; she
needed the practice more than he did.
"Of course, they can send in short piles again, like they did before," she
began after clearing her throat. "It s been suggested that s how this mess got
started in the first place." Her glance crossed Miles s, who nodded
encouragingly. "This means we re going to have to start keeping head counts,
and work out a strict rotation schedule in advance of people to divide their
rations with the short-changed. Each group leader must choose a quartermaster
and a couple of accountants to double-check his count."
"An equally disruptive move the Cetagandans may try," Miles couldn t help
putting in, "is to send in an overstock, giving us the interesting problem of
how to equitably divide the extras. I d provide for that, too, if I were you."
He smiled blandly up at
Tris.
She raised an eyebrow at him, and continued. "They may also try dividing the
chow pile, complicating our problem of capturing it so as to strictly control
its re-distribution. Are there any other really dirty tricks any of you can
anticipate?" She couldn t help glancing at Miles.
One of the group leaders raised his hand hesitantly. "Ma am - they re
listening to all this. Aren t we doing their thinking for them?"
Miles rose to answer that one, loud and clear. "Of course they re listening.
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We ve doubtless got their quivering attention." He made a rude gesture
domewards. "Let them. Every move they make is a message from outside, a shadow
marking their shape, information about them. We ll take it."
"Suppose," said another group leader even more hesitantly, "they cut off our
air again? Permanently?"
"Then," said Miles smoothly, "they lose their hard-won position one-up on the
IJC, which they ve gone to enormous trouble to gain. It s a propaganda coup
they ve been making much of lately, particularly since our side, in the stress
of the way things are going back home, hasn t been able to maintain its own
troops in style, let alone any captured Cetagandans. The Cetagandans, whose
published view is that they re sharing their Imperial government with us out
of cultural generosity, are claiming this as a demonstration of their superior
civilization and good manners -"
Some jeers and catcalls marked the prisoners view of this assertion, and
Miles smiled and went on. "The death rate reported for this camp is so
extraordinary, it s caught the IJC s attention. The Cetagandans have managed
to account for it so far, through three separate IJC inspections, but 100%
would be a bit extreme even for them to justify." A shiver of agreement,
compressed rage, ran through his rapt listeners.
Miles sat again. Oliver leaned over to him to whisper, "How the hell did you
come by all that information?"
Miles smirked. "Did it sound convincing? Good."
Oliver sat back, looking unnerved. "You don t have any inhibitions at all, do
you?"
"Not in combat."
Tris and her group leaders spent the next two hours laying out chow call
scenario flow charts, and their tactical responses at each branching. They
broke up to let the group leaders pass it on to their chosen subordinates, and
Oliver to his crew of supplementary Enforcers.
Tris paused before Miles, who had succumbed to gravity sometime during the
second hour and now lay in the dirt staring somewhat blankly at the dome,
blinking in an effort to keep his blurring eyes open. He had not slept in the
day and a half before entering this place. He was not sure how much time had
passed since then.
"I thought of one more scenario," Tris remarked. "What do we do if they do
nothing at all? Do nothing, change nothing."
Miles smiled sleepily. "It seems most probable. That attempted double-cross on
the last chow call was a slip on their part, I
think."
"But in the absence of an enemy, how long can we go on pretending we re an
army?" she persisted. "You scraped us up off the bottom for this. When it runs
down at last, what then?"
Miles curled up on his side, drowning in weird and shapeless thoughts, and
enticed by the hint of an erotic dream about a tall aggressive redhead. His
yawn cracked his face. "Then we pray for a miracle. Remind me to discuss
miracles with you... later...."
He half-woke once when somebody shoved a sleeping mat under him. He gave
Beatrice a sleepy bedroom smile.
"Crazy mutant," she snarled at him, and rolled him roughly onto the pad.
"Don t you go thinking this was my idea."
"Why Suegar," Miles muttered, "I think she likes me." He cuddled back into the
entwining limbs of the dream-Beatrice in fleeting peace.
To Miles s secret dismay, his analysis proved right. The Cetagandans returned
to their original rat bar routine, unresponsive again to their prisoners
internal permutations. Miles was not sure he liked that. True, it gave him
ample opportunity to fine-tune his distribution scheme. But some harassment
from the dome would have directed the prisoners attention outward, given them
a foe again, above all broken the paralyzing boredom of their lives. In the
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long run, Tris must prove right.
"I hate an enemy who doesn t make mistakes," Miles muttered irritably, and
flung his efforts into events he could control.
He found a phlegmatic prisoner with a steady heartbeat to lie in the dirt and
count his own pulse, and began timing distribution, and then working on
reducing timing.
"It s a spiritual exercise," he announced when he had his fourteen [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]