The headman wasn't listening. He attacked, screeching, and brought the sword down and around in a wicked, decapitating cut. The captain blocked the blow with the voice gun, which coughed and died. He was still trying to reason with the old man, but his voice sounded smaller and different now — and the headman wasn't listening.
Twice he struck, and a third time, and each time the captain backed away a bit and parried with the voice gun, which was rapidly being reduced to battered junk. As the sword came up again, the captain called back over his shoulder.
"Private Truscoe, take this man out. This has gone far enough."
Billy was well trained and knew what to do without even thinking about it. A step forward, the flitgun raised to his shoulder and aimed, the safety off, and when the man's head filled the sight he squeezed off the shot.
With a throat-clearing cough the cloud of compressed gas blasted out and struck the headman full in the face.
"Masks on," Captain Carter ordered, and once more the movement was automatic.
Small of the stock in his left hand, right hand free, grasp the handle (gas mask, actuating) under the brim of his helmet, and pull. The transparent plastic reeled down and he hooked it under his chin. All by the numbers.
But then something went wrong. The Mace-IV that the flitgun expelled was supposed to take anyone out. Down and out. But the headman was not going down. He was retching, his belly working in and out uncontrollably while the vomit ran down his chin and onto his bare chest. He still clutched the long sword and, with his free hand, he threw his helmet to the ground and pried open one streaming eye. He must have made out Billy's face through his tears, because he turned from the captain and came on, sword raised, staggering.
Billy brought the flitgun up, but it was in his left hand and he couldn't fire. He changed the grip, fumbling with it, but the man was still coming on. The sword glistened as the rising sun struck it.
Billy swung the gun around like a club and caught the headman across the temple with the thick barrel. The headman pitched face forward to the ground and was still.
Billy pointed the gun down at him and pulled the trigger, again and again, the gas streaming out and covering the sprawled figure.
Until the captain knocked the gun from his hand and pulled him about, almost throwing him to the ground.
"Medic!" the captain shouted; then, almost a whisper through his clenched teeth, "You fool, you fool."
Billy just stood, dazed, trying to understand what had happened, as the ambulance pulled up. There were injections, cream on the man's face, oxygen from a tank; then he was loaded onto a stretcher and the doctor came over.
"It's touch and go, Captain. Possible skull fracture, and he breathed in a lot of your junk. How did it happen?"
"It will be in my report," Captain Carter answered in a toneless voice.
The doctor started to speak, thought better of it, and turned and climbed into the ambulance. It pulled away, dodging around the big trucks that were coming into the village. The people were out of the houses now, huddled in knots, talking under their breaths. There would be no more resistance.
Billy was aware that the captain was looking at him, looking as if he wanted to kill. The gas mask was suddenly hot on Billy's face and he pulled it free.
"It wasn't my fault, sir," Billy explained. "He just came at me."
"He came at me too. I didn't fracture his skull. It was your fault."
"No, it's not. Not when some old geek swings a rusty damn pig-sticker at me."
"He is not a geek, Private, but a citizen of this country and a man of stature in this village. He was defending his home and was within his rights."
Billy was angry now. He knew it was all up with him and the Corps and his plans, and he didn't give a damn. He turned to the officer, fists clenched.
"He's a crummy geek from Geeksville, and if he got rights what are we doing here, just tell me that?"
The captain was coldly quiet now. "We were invited here by the country's president and the Parliament, you know that as well as I do." His voice was drowned out as a truck passed close by and the exhaust blatted out at them. It stopped and men jumped down and began to unload lengths of plastic piping. Billy looked the captain square in the eye and told him off, what he had always wanted to say.
"In a pig's ass we were invited here. Some big shot these local geeks never heard of says okay and we drop down their throats and spend a couple billion dollars of the U.S. taxpayers' money to give some geeks the good life they don't know nothing about and don't need — so what the hell!" He shouted the last words. The captain was much quieter.
"I suppose it would be better if we helped them the way we helped in Vietnam? Came in and burned them and shot them and blasted them right back to the Stone Age?"
Another truck stopped and began unloading sinks, toilets, electric stoves.
