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The knife replied, "Sir, please record the order in writing, before I carry it
out"
"What ?"
"Any subordinate may request an order be given in writing, and a true copy
recorded and notarized under seal, in circumstances such as these, sir. Please
see the Received Universal Code of Military Procedure Systems and Program
Manual at " and it recited a section and code number.
Atkins understood. The only time, really, a subordinate would ask for a
notarized copy of an order would be to preserve a copy as evidence for an
Inquest hearing. No subordinate would dare to make that request if the order
were lawful.
Atkins had, after all, been directly ordered by Prime Minister Kshatrimanyu
Han, his commander-in-chief, to cooperate with Phaethon, not to sabotage him.
He said, "You think I'm afraid of a court-martial, is that it? Don't make me
laugh."
"Sir, is the Marshal-General asking me to speculate about the
Marshal-General's state of mind, sir?"
"Well, I am not going to sit here and fret about my career (ha! if you can
call it a career) while an idealistic fool is planning to give the enemy
control of the only invulnerable warship in the Oecumene. Don't you think I'm
willing to sacrifice my career to do what I know is right?"
"Sir, is the Marshal-General asking me to estimate the Marshal-General's
ability to distinguish proper from improper conduct, or to comment upon the
Marshal-General's bravery, Sir? I do not think the Marshal-General is afraid
of a court-martial in and of itself, sir."
" 'In and of itself ? What the hell does that mean?"
But he knew what it meant. A court-martial as such did not awe him. But what
the court-martial represented, did. It represented a human attempt to enforce
and to protect those values for which soldiers lived and died: honor, courage,
fortitude, obedience.
He looked at the dagger in his hand. In the pommel was imprinted the insignia
of the Foederal Oecumenical Commonwealth: a sword bound into its sheath by the
windings of an olive wreath. Within the circle of that wreath, a watchful eye.
The motto: Semper Vigilantes. Eternal Vigilance.
The eye seemed to stare back at him remorselessly. Honor. Courage. Fortitude.
Obedience.
He said aloud, "I was born in the drylands, back when Mars was still red, on
the slope of Olympus Mons, and my father was killed by a warren breaker who
drilled into our run for our ice. My father's two clones were my uncles, and
twins. They all used the same passes and prints, because Mars, in those days,
was controlled by the fiefs, who would rather be safe than be free, and they
metered our water, and IQ and air, and they tried to keep track of everyone,
everywhere. But we were Icemen. We lived by the pump and the pike. And we
didn't bother to obey any regs we didn't like. The fiefs were Logicians, what
we now call Invariants, but we just called them the Un-dead.
"The plan was that Uncle Kassad would lie down in the coffin they sent for my
dad, and take a retarder, and pass himself off for dead, till he got out of
monitor range in the grave stream. Then he would wake up, dissolve his way to
the surface, and set off south after the warren breaker. He had his filter
pike with him, folded on his chest like a spear, which he was going to use to
pierce the breaker's dry suit to pump out his blood and filter the moisture,
till he got a volume equal to what we had lost from our ice.
"The Sophotechs, way back then, we all thought they were gods, and no one
understood them, or tried. But I was studying for a wardenship, and was a
cadet, and I believed what the Sophotechs preached, so I told my uncle that he
was wrong. Wrong, because the breaker came from the garden belt the Irenic
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Composition
controlled; wrong, because the breaker probably wasn't aware of what he had
done; it wasn't a man, just a part of a mass-mind, a cog in a mob. Wrong,
because the Undead police had already ruled the death an accident, and paid
the insurance.
'He showed me his pike, and pointed the field spike at my eye, so I could see
down the bore to the extraction cell. And I sweated (even though sweat was a
waste under our water laws) because I knew how quickly, if he touched the
trigger, the field could suck op the moisture in the tissues of my eye, my
veins, my brains. I was looking right at death.
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