• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

"Must have come in that ship," remarked somebody.

"No," the nurse told him. "Oh, no. They've been in the crèche for years."

"You mean your precious doctors have always had them?"

"Yes. Nothing but the best for the guardians of the purity of our Spartan stock, dearie. But who are we to begrudge them their little comforts?"

"Soldiers, that's who. It's we who should be the top caste of this world, who should have the first pickings. After all, the King's a soldier."

"But the doctors made him, dearie. They made all of us."

"Like hell they did. They just look after the birth machine. And if there wasn't a machine, we'd manage all right, just as the animals do."

"We might have to," the nurse said. "I heard two of the doctors talking. They were saying that the people were having it too soft, that for the good of the race we should have to return to the old ways. They're thinking of shutting the machine down."

"What! How can you be a fighting man if you have to lug a child around with you?"

"But you said that we could manage all right without the doctors."

"Yes. But that's different. No, the way I see it is this. These doctors are getting scared of the military, but they know that if most of us are budding we shan't be much good for fighting. Oh, the cunning swine! They just want things all their way all the time instead of for only most of the time."

"But you can't do anything about it," the nurse said.

"Can't we? Who have the weapons and the training to use 'em? Not your doctors, that's for certain. With no more than the men in this tavern, we could take the crèche—and get our paws on to those Arcadians they've got stashed away there."

"More than our paws!" shouted somebody.

"You're talking mutiny and treason, hoplite," protested the elderly sergeant.

"Am I?" The man was on his feet now, swaying drunkenly. "But the King himself had one of the doctors executed. That shows how much he thinks of 'em!" He paused, striving for words. They came at last. "Here, on Sparta, it's fair shares for all—excepting you poor damn helots, of course. But for the rest of us, the rulers, it should be share an' share alike. Oh, I know that the colonel gets better pay, better grub an' better booze than I do—but in the field he lives the same as his men, an' all of us can become colonels ourselves if we put ourselves to it, an', come to that, generals. But the colonels an' the generals an' the admirals don't have Arcadians to keep their beds warm. Not even the King does. An' now there's some of us who know what it's like. An' there's some of us who want more of it."

"They're plenty of Arcadians aboard the spaceship," somebody suggested.

"I may be drunk, fellow, but I'm not that drunk. The spaceship's a battlewagon, and I've heard that the captain of her has already threatened to use his guns and missiles. No, the crèche'll be easy to take."

"Sit down, you fool!" ordered the elderly sergeant. "You got off light after you assaulted the Arcadian spaceman, but he was only a foreigner. Now you're inciting to riot, mutiny, and the gods alone know what else. The police will use more than stun guns on you this time."

"Will they, old-timer? Will they? And what if they do? A man can die only once. What I did to that Arcadian has done something to me, to me, do you hear? I have to do it again, even though I get shot for it." The man's eyes were crazy and his lips, foam-flecked. "You don't know what it was like. You'll never know, until you do it. Don't talk to me about boys, or about soft, puling nurses like our long-nosed friend here. The doctors have the best there is, the best that there can ever be, and they should be made to share it!"

"The police . . ." began the sergeant.

"Yes. The police. Now let me tell you, old-timer, that I kept my ears flapping while they had me in their barracks. Practically every man has been called out to guard the spaceport—the spaceport, do you hear? That alien captain's afraid that there'll be a mob coming out to take his pretty Arcadians by force, and