Chapter Six – He Fights
After the hard-fought battle of Shiloh President Lincoln was lobbied to replace union commander General Ulysses S Grant. Disgusted by the timidity of his other generals, the president would not listen. “I can’t spare this man,” he said. “He fights.”
The little group moved to the information centre, the two androids carrying Honey who was utterly spent and crying uncontrollably. If the Midis wanted to use the bridge to leave that was fine by Gideon. In any case, he did not want to draw attention to the fact that there were only five of them, and their weapon of mass destruction was now a sobbing mess.
“We’ll kick out any Midis still there,” Gideon told Monster, “and come dawn we’ll check the camp for stragglers.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
The information centre was dark, but the door was open. Inside were several rooms adorned with placards and screens emphasising various part of Haven’s environment, as far as they could tell in the darkness. Midi sleeping mats were scattered over the floors but the Midis were all gone. They left Honey weeping on one of these mats, guarded by Fred and Sam, and checked the rooms in the upper storey, swords at the ready. These included three tiny bedrooms for anyone who had to stay over and store rooms, from one of which they heard muffled noises and cries. In it they found two young men trussed up on the floor. They were brothers, both dark haired and, Gideon supposed, good looking. The eldest, William, might have been in his senior year of an undergraduate degree. Thomas should have been in his final years at school. Both boys looked half-starved and their colony clothes – T-Shirts and jeans with a blazer – were dirty and torn. William had a beard, which had become matted. They rubbed circulation back into their hands and feet as they spoke.
“We heard yelling,” said William. He spoke with a slight English accent.
“That was us,” said Gideon. “We managed to drive off the Midis.”
“You – you fought them?” exclaimed Thomas.
“Well, yeah.” Gideon and Monster exchanged looks. “The heavy lifting was down by Honey, who’s downstairs.”
“Chick went nuclear,” said Monster.
“We and two androids were along for the ride,” said Gideon.
“I’d like to meet this Honey,” said William.
“Androids?” said Thomas.
“Honey’s downstairs, upset,” said Gideon. “It’s all caught up with her. The androids are down there too. Later. How come you guys wound up as guests of the Midis?”
“We were at the space port not the summer camp when everything happened and walked down here – our elders, the parents, did nothing about these guys. I mean look at this stuff.” William gestured at the swords his rescuers were carrying. “That’s all they’ve got and they were killing our people, and we were told not to resist; that non-violence would win in the end.”
“Non-violence, didn’t win,” said Thomas, bitterly. “When the Midis got sick of killing, they started using our people as slaves.”
“We wanted to see what we could do, but we didn’t have any weapons and a Midi patrol caught us,” said William.
Gideon later found out that, having not eaten for two days, the two brothers had been walking in the open without any precautions and had been taken easily.
“Where did you get the swords?” asked Thomas.
“Same place as the Androids, from The Witches – the creatures inside the structure.”
“You’ve been inside?” the brothers chorused.
“They brought us inside.” Gideon explained, as briefly as he could, his little group’s adventures.
“If I’ve got this right,” said William, “The Witches wanted us here as military protection from these enemies of theirs who are behind the Midis?”
“’bout the size of it,” said Gideon.
“I went through two years of mind numbing lectures on active passivism,” said Willian, “and all along these Witches wanted the violent part of the human experience.”
“Yep.”
“And you and Mr Monster, here…”
“I ain’t no mister,” said Monster.
“You two and the others were basically drugged, kidnapped and loaded onto a flight to Haven by Dr Benson, who grabbed whoever he could find who had been a soldier or just been violent.”
“Yep. In Benson’s mind there was no difference between a soldier and a criminal.”
“What is the difference?” asked Thomas.
“A soldier is about teamwork, discipline and training,” said Gideon. “They have to be trained, equipped, supplied and delivered to the right place in the battlefield and organised in units to fight as teams. Their actions are governed by rules of engagement and international treaties. It’s not about sticking a knife into the back of a comrade, stealing his stuff and then lying about it. See the difference?”
“Guess,” said Thomas.
“And you know about that stuff?” asked William.
“About being a soldier? Enough to get by. Aside from being a reserve quartermaster sergeant – meaning I look after stores - I’m also a military history nut.”
“Then you’re the one we’ve been looking for?” said William.
“Say what?”
“We don’t care if you’re a reserve quartermaster-whatever. We need help with soldiering.”
“We want to fight,” said Thomas. “We want to make the Midis pay for what’s happened.”
“Look, Will and Tom..”
“William,” said William.
“Thomas,” said Thomas.
“I dunno if you’ve been keeping count but there are five us, including you two if you want to join this happy band, plus two androids. That’s a raiding party, not an army of liberation, and we have to depend on The Witches for everything we need.”
William shrugged. “We have to start somewhere. and you say the gate is closed for now, right? It’s just us and them.”
“After what’s happened,” said Thomas, “that’s the way we want it.”
Gideon went back into the structure to talk to The Witches, to find them lined up in much the same order and sufficiently pleased with him for chasing away their enemies to give him human names they had chosen for themselves for his reference. These were Agnes (the non-environmentalist on Gideon’s right), Tabitha in the centre, the leader, and Sabrina who had been puzzled over the issue of gender equality, on the left.
Requests for food for five were referred to the interface. Agnes now knew something about the care and feeding of humans, or so she said (it later emerged that she knew more than a top medical school full of professors). The interface could produce a thick wafer which was nutritionally balanced for humans in any amount required, although increasing production would take time. Clothing and boots? Gideon pointed to his own clothes and shoes to illustrate what he meant. That question was waved towards the interface. Just tell the system what material consistency or flexibility was required and what shape. The resulting production would be brought up from the factory area by an android. The factory drew its feed stock from deep underground and, no, Gideon could not visit that area. A request for both Androids to be assigned to the band permanently, and that Fred be able to talk, resulted in a heated discussion between the three witches. It was the first time Gideon had heard them talk in their own language and to him it sounded like birds twittering.
“Twitter, twitter, twitter,” said Agnes.
“Twitter, twitter,” was the forceful response from Tabitha.
“Twitter, twitter, twitter, twitter, twitter,” said Sabrina in concerned tones. This went on for some time. At one point, all three stopped twittering to eye him appraisingly, then went back to their discussion.
“Alright,” said leader Tabitha, eventually. “But we will take back control if there is a problem.”
“Understood.”
Then they came to the much more difficult question of weapons. William and Thomas had already assured Gideon that the only weapons owned by humans on the planet were tranquiliser guns stored somewhere in Haven City and never used as far as they knew. Could The Witches’ machines make gun barrels and explosives? What were gun barrels and what were explosives? they asked. Sigh! After some discussion got across the idea of barrels and was told just try the interface. Manufacturing tolerances and tensile strength? The Witches had no idea. Test the material and then go back to the interface. There was a way to specify hardness. As for explosives, the interface had lots of sub-menus. Try those.
Gideon emerged from the structure, this time from the front door which opened for him, just before dawn, dog-tired, to find that the Midis had not reappeared but two newcomers from the Haven summer camp of about Thomas’s age had arrived from somewhere, ready to “join up”.
“Join up to what?” asked Gideon, taken aback.
“You’re the one who fights, aren’t you?” said one.
“In fact, you’re the only one who fights,” said the other. “We’ve seen those burning machines and Midi bodies. There’s been nothing like this, at all. No Midis have even been hurt before this.”
Gideon was tempted to point out that it had been a Honey-fuelled victory. He looked at the newcomers. They might have been Australian bushmen, Canadian lumberjacks or New Zealand shearers walking into an Empire recruiting station in 1914 fired up for an adventure only to wind up in the mud and slaughter of the Somme. They even had swags – rolled up bedding - on their backs. The heroic fools. In Gideon’s mind, something clicked.
“Well, if you want to join up, drop the packs!”
“Huh!”
“I said drop the packs, soldiers, and stand up straight! Shoulders back, stomach out, fists clenched, thumbs on top of the fists and in line with the seam of your trousers. Heels together. Feet at an angle of 30 degrees. Do it!”
Startled, they both compiled. Much later the two boys said that they felt as if they were suddenly in one of those rite of passage films when the hero is put through an ordeal, such as army training which involved yelling. They were being yelled at. The fightback had started. Gideon told them he thought he understood.
“William! Thomas! I see you two there.” The two young men had come out to see what the yelling was about. “Come over here and line up. You’re about to be inducted.” Gideon went through how they should stand. “Do not look at me, damn it,” he snapped at the newcomers. “Eyes front, look at the structure.”
Gideon had never been trained as a drill or recruit sergeant, he was stores, but he had seen recruit sergeants up close and could give a passable imitation of one. Monster turned up to watch. Gideon was not about to make him stand in line and Honey was still blubbering over Colin’s body which had been wrapped in Midi bedding and placed on the visitor centre’s back veranda. (She stopped long enough to have a hearty meal and went back to blubbering.) Having lined up all four of his new recruits, Gideon did not know what to do with them, so he made them swear an oath – to themselves.
“I swear,” so the oath on that first day ran, “that I’ve got myself into a real mess by agreeing to join up. The only person to blame for this is me. The only person who is going to get me out of this is myself by hard fighting, by taking orders from those placed above me, keeping discipline and standing by my comrades, or the devil take me.”
“That’s the oath for me,” said Monster. “Sign me up too. These Midi things have been killing humans and I’ve got nothing better to do than kill back.” He stood in a line with the rest of the recruits, lifted his right hand and put his left on his heart, and repeated the oath.
“Excuse me, Gideon,” said William.
“You now call me sergeant, Toms.” That was William’s last name.
“Sergeant, will we be getting weapons.”
“I’m trying to organise muskets.”
“Say, what?” said one of the newcomers.
“A gunpower musket. You load the power and ball in the top and..”
“We know what they are, sergeant” said William, “we looked up some weapons before we went walking. It’s just, aren’t they primitive?”
“Oh sure. I would like to give you an assault rifle firing 7.62 mm ammunition with over and under grenade launcher and laser sights, but I have to get it out of these guys,” Gideon jerked his thumb to indicate the structure, “and they don’t know anything at all about weapons. What I will do is arrange for caps to ignite the charge rather than use flints like they use to, so you’ll get something familiar to a soldier from the 1820s – but I’m not sure even about that. I don’t know about the strength of the barrels and about making the barrels and stocks – that’s the wooden part in the pictures you would have seen - fit together. I don’t know anything yet.”
“Still seems kinda primitive,” said Thomas.
“I’ve seen science fiction stories where humans have been marooned on a more primitive planet and started building stuff like time monitors out of spare parts they happened to have. Guess what, no spare parts. We’re starting from scratch. Muskets it is.”
“So, we’ll be musketeers,” said one of the newcomers.
“Don’t you mean Mouseketeers?” said the other.
“No, musketeers – Mouseketeers was an entertainment thing. We’re going to be musketeers.”
There, in the shadow of the structure, while The Witches meditated on the nature of space-time, and with Honey’s headless victims still scattered near-by, the Musketeer Corps of Haven was born.
“Do we get to like duel with swords?” asked Thomas.