Part 2 (1/2)

No. Not _cifiliced_--but it works.” Again he smiled. ”I said that I have become soft since I have been here, but I fear that your civilization is even softer.”

”A man can lie, even if his arms are pulled off or his feet crushed,”

MacMaine said stiffly.

The Kerothi looked startled. When he spoke again, it was in English. ”I will say no morr. If you haff questionss to ask, ko ahet. I will not take up time with furtherr talkink.”

A little angry with himself and with the general, MacMaine spent the rest of the hour asking routine questions and getting nowhere, filling up the tape in his minicorder with the same old answers that others had gotten.

He left, giving the general a brisk salute and turning before the general had time to return it.

Back in his office, he filed the tape dutifully and started on Item Two of the duty list: _Strategy a.n.a.lysis of Battle Reports_.

Strategy a.n.a.lysis always irritated and upset him. He knew that if he'd just go about it in the approved way, there would be no irritation--only boredom. But he was const.i.tutionally incapable of working that way. In spite of himself, he always played a little game with himself and with the General Strategy Computer.

The only battle of significance in the past week had been the defense of an Earth outpost called Bennington IV. Theoretically, MacMaine was supposed to check over the entire report, find out where the losing side had erred, and feed correctional information into the Computer.

But he couldn't resist stopping after he had read the first section: _Information Known to Earth Commander at Moment of Initial Contact_.

Then he would stop and consider how he, personally, would have handled the situation if he had been the Earth commander. So many s.h.i.+ps in such-and-such places. Enemy fleet approaching at such-and-such velocities. Battle array of enemy thus-and-so.

Now what?

MacMaine thought over the information on the defense of Bennington IV and devised a battle plan. There was a weak point in the enemy's attack, but it was rather obvious. MacMaine searched until he found another weak point, much less obvious than the first. He knew it would be there. It was.

Then he proceeded to ignore both weak points and concentrate on what he would do if he were the enemy commander. The weak points were traps; the computer could see them and avoid them. Which was just exactly what was wrong with the computer's logic. In avoiding the traps, it also avoided the best way to hit the enemy. A weak point _is_ weak, no matter how well it may be b.o.o.by-trapped. In baiting a rat trap, you have to use real cheese because an imitation won't work.

_Of course_, MacMaine thought to himself, _you can always poison the cheese, but let's not carry the a.n.a.logy too far._

All right, then. How to hit the traps?

It took him half an hour to devise a completely wacky and unorthodox way of hitting the holes in the enemy advance. He checked the time carefully, because there's no point in devising a strategy if the battle is too far gone to use it by the time you've figured it out.

Then he went ahead and read the rest of the report. Earth had lost the outpost. And, worse, MacMaine's strategy would have won the battle if it had been used. He fed it through his small office computer to make sure. The odds were good.

And that was the thing that made MacMaine hate Strategy a.n.a.lysis. Too often, he won; too often, Earth lost. A computer was fine for working out the logical outcome of a battle if it was given the proper strategy, but it couldn't devise anything new.

Colonel MacMaine had tried to get himself transferred to s.p.a.ce duty, but without success. The Commanding Staff didn't want him out there.

The trouble was that they didn't believe MacMaine actually devised his strategy before he read the complete report. How could anyone out-think a computer?

He'd offered to prove it. ”Give me a problem,” he'd told his immediate superior, General Matsukuo. ”Give me the Initial Contact information of a battle I haven't seen before, and I'll show you.”

And Matsukuo had said, testily: ”Colonel, I will not permit a member of my staff to make a fool of himself in front of the Commanding Staff.

Setting yourself up as someone superior to the Strategy Board is the most antisocial type of egocentrism imaginable. You were given the same education at the Academy as every other officer; what makes you think you are better than they? As time goes on, your automatic promotions will put you in a position to vote on such matters--provided you don't prejudice the Promotion Board against you by antisocial behavior. I hold you in the highest regard, colonel, and I will say nothing to the Promotion Board about this, but if you persist I will have to do my duty. Now, I don't want to hear any more about it. Is that clear?”

It was.

All MacMaine had to do was wait, and he'd automatically be promoted to the Commanding Staff, where he would have an equal vote with the others of his rank. One unit vote to begin with and an additional unit for every year thereafter.

_It's a great system for running a peacetime social club, maybe_, MacMaine thought, _but it's no way to run a fighting force_.