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making certain the mines were active. Nobody would get up that way, either. He
turned back to Marquoz and the conversation, a conversa-tion he knew they
wouldn't be having under any other circumstances.
"You're not a Chugach any longer," he pointed out. "What did that to to your
self-image?"
Marquoz shrugged. "Well, it's not that much of a change, really. And I had no
more choice in it than I
had in being a Chugach. Makes no difference."
"But that brings us back to my original question," Ortega noted. "You could
have been whatever you wanted if you'd just gone with them."
Marquoz sighed. "You must understand, put the thing in the context of what
I've been telling you. You see, this is the first operation I've been involved
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in that had any meaning.
It's something like you said for yourself. Found dead in his bed from
jaundice, did nothing for anybody, made no difference if he had ever lived at
all: that could be the obituary of just about everyone who ever lived, here
and any-where
else in the universe. It makes absolutely no difference in the scheme of
things whether all but a handful of people live or die. No more than the
im-portance of a single flower, or blade of grass, or vege-table, or bird. It
would make no difference if those men who held that ancient pass or that
equally ancient fort had, instead, died of disease or old age or in a saloon
fight. But it made a difference that they died where they did. It mattered. It
justified their whole existence.
And it matters that 1 am here, now, and make this choice.
It matters to me and to you. It matters to the Well World and to the whole
damned universe."
He raised his arms in a grand sweep at the black-ness. "Do you really
understand what ws're doing here?" he went on. "We're going to decide the
entire fate of the universe for maybe billions of years. Not
Brazil, not Mavra Chang, not really. They're only making the decisions because
we are allowing them to!
Right here, now, tomorrow, and the next day. Tell me, Ortega, isn't that worth
dying for? Others may be misfits; they may be born on some grubby little world
or in some crazy hex, and they might grow up to be farmers or salesmen or
dictators or generals or kings, only then to grow old and die and be replaced
by other indistinguishable little grubs that'll do the same damned things. And
it won't matter one damned bit.
But we'll matter, Ortega, and we all sense it. That's why our enemies will
sing songs about us and our names and memories will become ageless legends to
countless races. Because, in the end, who we are and what we do in the next
two days is all that mat-ters, and we're the only ones that are important."
Ortega stared at him, even though all he could really make out were the
creature's glowing red eyes.
Finally he said, "You know, Marquoz, you're abso-lutely insane. What bothers
me is that I can't really find any way to disagree with you and you know what
that makes me." He reached to the heavy leather belt between his second and
third pair of arms and removed a large flask. "I seem to dimly recall from old
diplomatic receptions that Hakazits have funny drinking methods but tend to
drink the same stuff for the same reason as Uliks. Shall we drink to history?"
Marquoz laughed and took the bottle. "To history, yes! To the history of the
future we write in the next two days! To our history, which we chose and which
we determined!" He threw his head back and poured the booze down his throat,
then coughed and handed the bottle back to Ortega, who started to work on the
remains of it.
"That's good stuff," the Hakazit approved.
"Nothing but the best for the legion the night be-fore," Ortega responded.
A voice nearby said, "Got enough of that left for me? Or would it kill me?"
They jumped slightly, then laughed when they saw it was Gypsy. "Damn it. I
keep expecting Gunit Sangh to pop out of the rocks," Ortega grumbled. He threw
the flask to the tall man, who caught it and took a pull, then screwed up his
face in pleasant sur-prise.
"Whew!Nothing synthetic in that!
"he approved, then got suddenly serious. "I'm about to go to Yua and tell her
the situation. Last I heard she'd taken some of her squad and flown around
Khutir's main force on her way here. They surprised the old general good; gave
him a sound thrashing. But they're still three days behind."
Marquoz chuckled. "Three days. Couldn't be two." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]