VII
"Lesson time, Emmy." Norfeldt's hands were again folded over his ample belly, as he sat—well, floated, really—in his couch, puffing clouds of smoke toward the ashtray.
I'm not criticizing. There wasn't a damn thing to do until we reached the Gate.
But it still didn't seem right. "None of that crap, Major. We blew it. It's going to be a Drop."
The Dutchman shrugged and blew a cloud of smoke at the exhaust over his head. "You're right—but why?"
"Because they kill people—espers in particular. I mean, they had to claw Buchholtz to death, but they didn't even have to touch McCaw to kill him. Both of them were psi-positive. Both died. We didn't."
"Don't be stupid. Think about it. Second Team didn't die, and all of them except the Team leader were highly positive—more than Kurt. Well," he said, waving his chins at the screen, "at least they didn't die here—they died back on our side. How much do you want to bet that the only First Team member who didn't change his psych profile was the TL?"
"I don't understand."
"Figures. Try thinking about it."
"Wait! They . . . didn't think of you and me as people."
"You're beginning to get it, Emmy." The Dutchman chuckled. "We learned enough down there, just enough to work it out. Remember the greeting that the leader of the aliens gave McCaw?"
"Something like 'We'll give you what you want,' no?"
"Close enough. Hey, Emmy," he said, like an idea had just struck him, "you want a beer?"
It's strictly against regs to drink on duty. And since there were two of us in the scout, one of us had to be on duty.
"Sure." But a spaceside watch isn't something that you really need to be completely sober for, and a beer was going to do me good. Besides, the Dutchman had told me not to quote regs at him.
He leaned over toward the server and punched up a couple of frosty bulbs, tossing the yellowy one to me, saving the purplish one for himself.
I opened mine and took a deep drink, careful of the way it tended to bubble out of my mouth. Usually, I don't like drinking anything bubbly in low-gee, not even out of a bulb—it feels as if I get more in my nose than in my mouth.
"Tell me, Emmy—what do you think Buchholtz wanted, more than anything else in the world?"
I sat back and thought on it for a while. No rush, no rush at all, dammit. Nothing I could say or could think of would bring either of them back. "Maybe . . . maybe he really wanted to die in combat."
"Bingo. That was Kurt. I knew that from the moment I met him, way back when. He was more of a kraut than you are, kid; wanted to die gloriously, in battle final. Kurt Buchholtz was always a Götterdämmerung, looking for a place to happen. The natives gave him that place—just like he wanted."
"And McCaw?"
"C'mon, kid, it's even more obvious about Ari McCaw. He was always bored with the real world. They gave him that way out." Norfeldt rubbed a hand across his face. "Somehow or other, they've developed an esper society based on giving everyone what he wants. And if you've got a strong enough stomach, you'd have to admit that they gave Kurt and Ari what they wanted. A kind of justice, really." He shrugged. "That's the way it goes."
"But that means we don't have to Drop! We don't have to blow up the Gate."
The Dutchman didn't like wireguns; he usually carried an old-fashioned Colt & Wesson point-forty-four Magnum. The "forty-four" comes from the old-fashioned measurements of the diameter of the cartridge; it comes to just a bit more than a centimeter across.
It looks larger when a fat man is holding it in his hand, not—quite—pointed in my direction.
It looked like a cannon, is what it looked like.
"Yes, Emmy, we do have to Drop it. And we will, understood? Any further discussion on the matter is going to get you gigged for insubordination, if I don't shoot you down where you stand. You got me, shithead?"
"Yes, sir."
"Granted, it's not the way I'd like to do it—if I had my way, we'd bring Magellan back through the Gate, unleash a worldwrecker, and blow that dirtball to bits. But there's no way I can count on that, so we're going to take the sure way."
"I . . . don't understand."
"That's because you're still green, Emmy. If you started giving everybody what they want, too damn many millions of them would end up like Kurt and Ari—or worse. Justice." He snorted as he shook his head sadly. "Ever ask anyone, back at the Academy, why all Contact Service people are officers? No enlisted. Why?"
I quoted from memory. "'The responsibilities of each and every member of the Contact Service are—'"
"No. It's because we're not really military, Emmy. We're cops.
"Go ask a cop sometime, kid. Ask him whether he thinks people need justice. Or mercy."