Finding technite deposits is facilitated by two observations. First, all past known technite planets, and now Orlantha, were found in the five-parsec Rombil Sector. And second, all known technite sites, including now the Orlanthan sites, are within some area of impact terrain very rich in radioactive elements. The apparency is that, a rather long time ago, each technite area was struck by a large, more or less coherent radioactive mass from space. What the origin of such masses might be is not known.
—From: Summary Report of the Orlanthan Survey,
Royal Library, Landfall. Iryala, Y.P. 423.
In the library, Varlik looked at what little the library had on the planet, this time scanning more closely the brief technical summary from the planetological survey. It still didn't do him much good. Then he called up technetium. A silvery-gray radioactive metal, said the summary, known only from a rare ore called technite. Atomic number 43, half lives up to 2.4 x 106 Standard years . . .
From the beginning of history, technite had been mined first on a planet called Technite 3, then Technite 4, Technite 5, and finally on Kettle, the first known technite planet to be human-habitable, if just barely. Like Kettle, Technite 3, 4, and 5 were all in the five-parsec Rombil Sector. Other planets in the same sector, with evidence of ancient mining, are assumed to have been Technite 1 and 2. Records of their exploitation do not exist, as the putative Technite 1 and 2 workings predate the organized historical record that began with the First Empire.5
Technite is sufficiently radioactive that miners as well as refinery crews had to wear heavy and cumbersome "hot-suits" and breathe bottled oxygen, as protection against radioactive dust. Exhaust fans ran constantly in the mines and refineries to minimize suspended dust in the air. The refined technite was shipped off-planet for extraction of its technetium, as the extraction process required considerable support technology.
It occurred to him to call back the information on Tyss, the homeworld of the T'swa mercenaries, but data on Tyss proved even skimpier than data on Orlantha, because there'd been only a cursory planetological survey. The T'swa sounded like naturals for fighting on Orlantha, because if Orlantha was nicknamed "Kettle," Tyss was often referred to as "Oven." Temperatures ran even hotter on Oven than on Kettle, though the atmosphere was generally much drier; Tyss was a world characterized by deserts, as Kettle was by oceans and jungles. And if Kettle was unique among gook worlds for its technite, Tyss was unique for its exports of fighting men. It wasn't even usually referred to as a gook world like all the other "resource worlds—worlds without significant statutory rights."
The entry listed a minimum of physical parameters and no history at all. He could see nothing relevant that he'd missed earlier. At the end it was cross-referenced to T'swa Mercenaries and to Philosophies: Exotic. He'd already read the entry on T'swa mercenaries, which in two paragraphs only mentioned their exceptional skill in individual and small-unit combat and barely named some of their more significant military actions. It made him wish he'd had a day or two more on Iryala, where he'd had access to the most complete library bank in the Confederation.
He decided to call up the cross-referenced entry on philosophy, and found it obscure and uninformative. The unifying element in human life on Tyss, it said, was a philosophy, T'sel, the literal meaning of which was "life on Tyss." It claimed to allow for and codify "every human bent," whatever that meant, and classified the various "Ways" of T'swa life, with a chart showing the categories:
It didn't mean much to Varlik. He read on:
Very briefly, at any time in a person's life, one is said to have a clear mindset for one or another attitude—the rows of the chart—and after childhood these tend to be more or less permanent, with changes toward the lower levels more likely than upward changes. Further, a person is said to be born with a proclivity for certain fields of activity—one will tend to put one's self or find one's self in situations that fall within the columns of the chart. And someone whose mindset is for Work will perform differently on a job from someone whose mindset is for Fight.
As for the terms, Play is a nonpolar activity—one without winning or losing positions from the standpoint of the player. The only function of Play is the pleasure of the player.
To Compete is to engage in a polar activity—one that has a winning position, a losing position, and partisan spectator positions. The intention is to win, with no intention to destroy or subdue. The primary rules governing Compete, which are universal laws, are generally inaccessible to the competitor. The secondary rules, however, which define and control the specific games, are known or readily knowable and are generally enforced.
Work is similarly polar, with success, failure, and partisan spectator positions. The primary rules are generally unknowable to the worker. Secondary rules are generally in place and knowable but in practice are more or less circumvented, ignored, or altered.
Fight has winning, losing, and partisan spectator positions, and differs from Compete in that the intention is to subdue and/or destroy, and in having secondary rules which are bypassed at the opportunity and convenience of the participants.
Study is also polar, with succeed, fail, and watch positions. (I have some difficulty understanding this level, which Master Gao says is because it is the level I am at, and said that from it I might well attain a great deal of knowledge but not much wisdom. I'm afraid that for me it will have to suffice.)
Levels below Play involve increasing amounts of seriousness. There is no seriousness in Play.
Master Gao also pointed out that the chart is a two-dimensional simplification with the sole purpose. . . .
Varlik shook his head impatiently and simply skimmed to the end of the article. He'd had the idea that he would arrive on Kettle armed with a mass of data, well digested, to serve as a framework for understanding, with pigeonholes to fit his observations into. Well, he'd have to do the best he could with what he had. Absently he called for a printout, then cleared the memory. He'd have to try Voker again the next day and see what he could learn about T'swa equipment, tactics, and strategy.
Meanwhile, it was too early to go to bed. He keyed the author index, then called Hasniker, Gorth to the screen. Hasniker was a popular adventure novelist who reputedly researched his story situations diligently. Varlik slowly scrolled the annotated titles and, sure enough, there was one that dealt with T'swa mercenaries: A Crown Prince on Ice. Maybe, he thought sardonically, Hasniker had found something he hadn't.
The next morning, the female half of the video team came into the messhall while Varlik was eating breakfast. Mike Brusin's attention left his plate to pass Varlik's right ear, and Varlik rotated his head enough to see. She was walking over to them, a husky young woman looking like an ex-athlete who'd gained some weight.
"Mind if I sit here?" she asked.
"Be my guest," Brusin replied.
Varlik rose while Brusin was speaking. "I'm Varlik Lormagen, with Central News."
"Konni Wenter, Iryala Video," she answered, and sat down.
The messman arrived to take her order, then left.
"Where's your partner?" Brusin asked.
"Sleeping in, I suppose."
"I thought he might be." Brusin grinned. "He sure knows how to pour it down. Holds it well, but that much is bound to have aftereffects."
She avoided the invitation to talk about her partner. "Who do we see to get video cubeage of the war equipment you're carrying to Kettle?"
"You talk to Major Athermon, the ship's executive officer. That's him over there, with the thinning blond hair. And he'll want you to clear it with Colonel Voker, sitting across from him, in green. Colonel Voker is in charge of the ordnance."
"What do you do?" Konni asked.
"I'm the watch officer in charge of the third watch, and I'm also the supercargo." Brusin paused to grin. "And the self-appointed, agreed-upon shepherd of guests. Which one of you is in charge—you or Mr. Bakkis?"
"Bertol's the boss, but he usually puts me in charge, except on a shoot, as long as everything's going all right. He's the creative genius and cameraman. I'm the expediter; I arrange things and do interviews."
Bertol Bakkis, thought Varlik. That was the name. The man had won prizes for his coverage of—what was it? The Omsedris flood and—the big fire in the Kolmess Forest.
Varlik finished his chops and fries, then glanced toward Voker. He'd hoped to sit by the colonel again this morning, but the man had been sitting with others, with no available seat adjacent or across from him. Varlik held up his cup and received a nod from the messman, who headed for the joma urn. He'd wait and catch Voker before he left, or follow him, if necessary.
His attention went back to the conversation between Brusin and Konni Wenter. Apparently Brusin was proving uninformative, because Konni turned unexpectedly to Varlik. "What have you been able to learn about Kettle and this war?" she asked.
"Not much," Varlik answered. He'd keep what he knew to himself, although he felt uncomfortable about it. It was his professional edge. "How about you?"
She made a rude sound, not loudly. "I planned to spend a day or two in the royal library, but it only took me about an hour. There was a lot of planetological data, including the mineralogical survey and some old stuff on tribal customs. That's all."
He decided not to ask if she'd found anything on the T'swa mercenaries. Perhaps she didn't know they were involved. Then it struck him that he hadn't brought up the T'swa with Voker, either, and Voker hadn't mentioned them on his own.
Two of the men at Voker's table got up and left, leaving only the ship's executive officer still sitting with him. Meanwhile, Konni Wenter was just starting to eat. Varlik got up, excusing himself, and walked toward the E.O.'s table, joma cup in hand. Voker and the E.O., Major Athermon, had finished eating and were talking, not the most propitious situation to interrupt. Athermon looked up with a slight frown as Varlik arrived. Varlik bobbed a small head bow.
"Excuse me, Major Athermon, Colonel Voker. Major, my name is Varlik Lormagen, with Central News. I just want to ask Colonel Voker if I can meet with him sometime this morning." His eyes moved to the colonel. Surprisingly, Voker smiled.
"Sure, Lormagen. Major Athermon just said he needed to check the bridge." He turned to Athermon. "Lormagen served an enlistment in the army a while back. Made sergeant. Central News is sending him out to report on the Kettle war."
Athermon looked at Varlik and nodded, a nod that was curt without being rude. "Well," said Athermon, "it would be unreal to tell you to enjoy your assignment. Let me wish you long life." He turned to Voker. "Have a good day, colonel. It was nice talking with you."
"Thank you, major. Same to you." Voker and Varlik watched the executive officer out the door before talking further, then Voker spoke mockingly. "Did you have any inspirations after we talked?"
"No, sir. I made further use of a library console, and found essentially nothing. Nothing of value on Kettle, and almost as little on Tyss."
The colonel's eyebrows raised fractionally and he looked around them. "Tell you what," Voker said, "why don't we talk in my cabin? It has the advantage of privacy."
Voker got up without waiting for a reply, and Varlik followed him out of the messroom, down a wide corridor and up a companionway, saying nothing, then down another corridor, narrower but nicely carpeted. Ranking officer country, Varlik thought to himself.
Voker's cabin, though small, was twice the size of the cubbyhole Varlik occupied. It even had its own computer terminal. Voker motioned him to a chair, opened a knee-high refrigerator, and took out a bottle.
"Whiskey do?" he asked, and held up a bottle of smooth Crodelan. "One of the little bargains available on out-worlds." He put ice in two glasses, poured a liberal shot in each, then handed one to Varlik and sat down. "I like this stuff too well, so I ration myself to two a day. Might as well have the first one now." He took a small, critical sip. "You mentioned Tyss. I take it you've heard the rumor about T'swa mercenaries. Where?"
A rumor! It could be false then. If it wasn't true, he needed to rethink some things. "From my boss," Varlik answered. "But he considered it fact. It's probably the reason he sent me to Kettle."
"Interesting. Do you know where he heard it?"
"No, but I could make an educated guess. Central News has close connections within His Majesty's administrative staff. We're often chosen to, uh, release selected 'rumors' or 'leaks' to test public reaction. Not that this was anything like that, but it could easily have come from the same kind of source."
Voker looked thoughtful. "I heard it suggested some four deks back, but General Lamons turned it down."
"Why is that?"
"First, he doesn't believe in elite units. They offend his sense of Standardness. Plus the T'swa are as non-Standard as you can get." The colonel's eyes met and held Varlik's as he said it. "Actually, neither Standard Management nor the army's supplemental policies say that elite units aren't all right. Or that non-Standard contractor forces aren't."
Voker slowed as if for effect. "Besides which, there are places for Standardness and there are places for innovation—creative imagination. Every damned thing man has or does was an innovation at some time or other, and imagination before that."
Varlik didn't flinch, but inwardly he squirmed at the concept. Voker saw it, and his slight smile came out awry. "Besides that, Lamons considers that to use mercenaries in a situation like this would be an affront to the Iryalan Army."
"The T'swa would seem to be almost perfect for Kettle, though," Varlik said.
"Exactly. They're adapted to the climate, they're specialists in wildland fighting, and they're more expendable than our own people. T'swa casualties are more acceptable to the public as well as the government. This was pointed out to Lamons, but he refused the logic."
Voker swirled the dark liquor in his glass, eyeing it thoughtfully. "I wouldn't be surprised if what you heard about bringing in T'swa is true, though. Not a bit. The suggestion seemed to have high-ranking interest back home. Someone may have bypassed Lamons and gotten the idea to the Royal Council."
"What, specifically, could the T'swa do that the army can't?" Varlik asked. "Besides stand the heat."
"Huh! What can the Royal Ballet do that the army can't? And a lot of things that the army can do, the T'swa can do quicker and more efficiently." He grimaced wryly at Varlik. "I regret to say."
"Have you ever worked with T'swa?" Varlik asked hopefully.
"No, but I've read a couple of contract monitor debriefs from trade worlds, and the War College study on the T'swa, such as it is. How much do you know about them?"
"Not much," Varlik admitted ruefully. "Only that they're supposed to be almost—super-soldiers. Most of what I've read is adventure fiction, I'm afraid. I haven't been able to find anything else."
Voker grunted. "And you checked the ship's library? I'd have expected better of it; any base library would have the War College study on them. Not that many read it; like I said, the T'swa aren't—Standard."
Again Varlik's stomach twisted: The colonel had said the word "Standard" in a tone bordering on condescension.
"You used the term 'super-soldiers,' " Voker went on. "As individuals, that's not an exaggeration. They start their training as little kids. The T'swa philosophy has it that a person is born imprinted with a preference for a particular kind of life, and they claim they can tell what it is when the kid is only five or six years old.
"I know that doesn't make any sense genetically, but it's the basis they operate on, so that's the age they start training them—five or six. From then on that's pretty much all they do—train as warriors and study T'swa philosophy.
"They have discipline, of the kind that works best: self-discipline. And maximum individual skills. And their small-unit performance is supposedly the best. Their drawback, such as it is, is that they won't operate as an integral part of large units—armies, corps, divisions. That's undoubtedly part of why Lamons doesn't want 'em: he doesn't know what to do with 'em. Their contracts specify that they operate on their own, subject only to agreed-upon objectives. And they don't hesitate to refuse assignments if they don't fit the contract terms.
"The thing to do with T'swa is, first you know the contract thoroughly, then pick something you need done that no one else can do and that fits the contract terms, which are broad enough. Then you tell them to do it. Nothing hard about that. House-to-house combat, for example: they're great for cleaning out a town. Or fighting in wild country. But to use them, it helps to have a couple teaspoons of imagination."
"What would you tell the T'swa to do?" Varlik asked.
"Easy. I'd tell them to find and hit the guerrillas' main headquarters, capture as many top-ranking officers as they can, and bring them in. Take explosives and blow out a clearing big enough to come in with floaters, then lift out with their prisoners."
"That doesn't sound easy to me."
"I didn't mean it would be easy to do. The decision would be easy for me."
"Do you think they could pull off something like that?"
"I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't bet a dek's pay on it, but I'd go a week's. Or maybe I would go a dek's pay. Anyway, it'd be worth the try. The T'swa don't mind casualties; they just like to fight. And if they got some really high-ranking prisoners, we could probably find out who's behind the uprising—who provided the weapons, the training. Maybe even why. If we knew that, maybe we could end this war by hitting the source, whatever that is.
"One thing I do know for sure: I don't want to spend the rest of my career trying to root gooks out of the bush at a hundred and thirty degrees of heat."
"How does General Lamons intend to handle the situation?"
"Land heavy forces at Beregesh, take over the surrounding area, fortify the perimeter to keep out the gooks, then rebuild the refinery and reopen the mines."
"Is that practical?"
"If we're willing to commit, say, six divisions there. Lamons is assuming that the gooks have ten or fifteen thousand troops, and I wouldn't argue about that. There are two main problems: One, protecting the engineering and other units while they build an infiltration-proof defensive perimeter that's got to be—oh, maybe twenty miles long. And two, the steambath Beregesh environment. In the mining districts, the troops have to wear cool-suits to function, and they're uncomfortable and damned clumsy. The climate's bad enough up north at Aromanis, but that's a resort compared to Beregesh. At Aromanis we don't need cool-suits."
Voker stopped and regarded Varlik as if something was dawning on him. "Lormagen," he said, "do you have it in mind to feature the T'swa in your articles? Is that what you plan to do?"
"That's what I was thinking about."
"You don't know what you're letting yourself in for. They may be the most interesting thing to write about, or to read about, but frankly, you'll never keep up with them. I'm not sure any Iryalan would be able to, even if they'd have him."
Voker leaned forward, forearms on knees. "Tell you what. You forget about the T'swa and I'll feed you all the leads you can follow up on."
"I really appreciate the opportunity," Varlik answered slowly, "and I hate to turn it down. But what I really want to do is go with the T'swa and let people see them in action—in reality, not in fiction. At least I want to try. There'll be more public interest in them."
To his surprise, Voker grinned. "Got you," said the colonel. "And you'd make a bigger name for yourself. In your shoes I'd feel the same way." He stood, took a case from an open-front cupboard, put it on his bunk, and opened it. There were a number of cubes in it, and he took one out.
"Here," he said, holding it out. "Conversational Tyspi, self-taught. Maybe it didn't occur to you, but the T'swa have their own language; several gook worlds do, more or less. All T'swa mercenaries supposedly speak decent Standard, but among themselves they'll probably talk their own lingo. You'll want to understand as much of it as you can." Varlik took the cube as Voker continued. "Although anyone who thinks as differently as they must . . . But if you can even sort of talk their language, they'll probably like you for it."
He didn't sit down again, but stood as if waiting for Varlik to get up. "And if you're going to tag along with them, you'll have to be in great physical condition. You've got twenty-five days!" He stepped to the door and held it open. Varlik arose, uncertain. "You don't think a man in a cool-suit can keep up with the T'swa, do you?" Voker asked. "You'll have to be in incredible condition and able to take the heat unprotected."
It hadn't occurred to Varlik, and his face showed it.
"Although it just might be possible," Voker said. "If you've got the guts for it. You don't look too bad physically. A prospector team was stranded on Furnace One for three weeks after their suits gave out, and three of them survived. Out of eight. And Furnace One is a lot hotter than Kettle. Like a sauna. Of course, they didn't have to exert themselves."
Voker's grin was wide now. "Come along, bucky boy. We'll get you fixed up with a firefighter's outfit and start you on a good tough stamina routine in the officers' gym. Sweat all the softness out of you and get you ready for the heat. Those firemen's suits can simulate Kettle's climate; with their cooling systems disconnected, they'll keep body heat in as well as they keep external heat out."