Algis Budrys by Some Will Not Die

Author:Some Will Not Die
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-10T18:13:58+00:00

Boston was easy, by the time they came to it. They occupied the suburbs, isolating the city proper, and Matt sent a light naval force to control the harbor. The news of how Providence had fallen must have reached the city, for the opposition was light. It was not so much the overwhelming weight of Berendtsen’s men that forced the surrender — it was the far more crushing power of the past year’s bloody history. By the time they reached Boston, it was the dead, more than the army’s living, who fought Berendtsen’s battles.

An army they were, by now; The Army of Unification, no longer simply “the New York bunch.” Men from Bridgeport and Kingston marched with them, beside others, now, from Lexington and Concord.

James Garvin, Sergeant-Rifleman, stood on a hilltop with his corporal, a lean-jawed, pipe-sucking man named Drumm, and watched the men forming up.

“The Army of Unification,” Drumm said, his face reflective. “Another one of your brother-in-law’s casually brilliant ideas. No regional tag, and a nice idealistic implication. No disgrace to be beaten by it, since it’s an ‘army,’ and much easier to convince yourself into joining, since it has the built-in ideal of ‘unification’ to recommend it. You know, I’m more and more convinced that Berendtsen is one of your rare all-around geniuses.”

Jim grunted and stuffed his own pipe full of the half-cured Connecticut tobacco he was gradually becoming accustomed to. He liked Drumm. He’d been a good man ever since he’d joined up, and he was somehow comfortable to talk to. “He does all right,” Jim agreed.

Drumm smiled slightly. “He does a shade better than that.” A reflective look crossed his face, and he turned his head to focus on the knot of officers clustered around Berendtsen’s figure as he passed out orders. “I wonder, sometimes, what a man like that thinks of himself. Is he his own hero, or does he feel some gospel burning inside him? Does he perhaps think of himself as nothing more than a man doing a job? Does he shut out the signs that tell him some of his men hate him, and some love him? Does he understand that there are men, like us, who stand to one side and try to analyze every move he makes?”

“I don’t know,” Jim said. It was an old topic, and they found themselves bringing it up again and again. “My kid brother has a theory about him.”

Drumm spat past his pipestem. “Had a theory — he’s developed a dozen since, or he’s false to type.” He sighed. “Well, I suppose we have to have young intellectuals, if we’re ever to survive to be middle-aged philosophers. But I wish some of them, at least, would realize that they themselves encourage the high mortality rate among them.” He grinned wryly. “Particularly in these peculiar times. Well—” he nodded down at the men, “time to put it on the road again. Maine, here we come, ready or not.”

Jim walked down the hill toward his platoon. Maine, here we come, he thought.

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