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Title: Way of a Rebel

Author: Walter M. Miller

Illustrator: Rudolph Palais

Release Date: May 18, 2010 [EBook #32416]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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Way of a Rebel

By Walter Miller, Jr.

Illustrated by Rudolph Palais

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction April 1954. Extensive

research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

No one knows the heart of a rebel until his own search for the reason of right or wrong is made.

Lieutenant Laskell found the answer to his own personal rebellion deep beneath a turbulent

Atlantic, and somehow, when the time came, his decision wasn't too difficult....

Lieutenant Laskell surfaced his one-man submarine fifty miles off the Florida coast where he had

been patrolling in search of enemy subs. Darkness had fallen. He tuned his short wave set to the

Miami station just in time to hear the eight o'clock news. The grim announcement that he had

expected was quick to come:

"In accordance with the provisions of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, Congress today approved the

Manlin Bill, declaring a state of total emergency for the nation. President Williston signed it

immediately and tendered his resignation to the Congress and the people. The executive, legislative,

and judiciary are now in the hands of the Department of Defense. Secretary Garson has issued two

decrees, one reminding all citizens that they are no longer free to shirk their duties to the nation, the

other calling upon the leaders of the Eurasian Soviet to cease air attacks on the American continent

or suffer the consequences.

"In Secretary Garson's ultimatum to the enemy, he stated: 'Heretofore we have refrained from

employing certain weapons of warfare in the vain hope that you would recognize the futility of

further aggression and desist from it. You have not done so. You have persisted in your blood-thirsty

folly, despite this nation's efforts to reach an agreement for armistice. Therefore I am forced to

command you, in the Name of Almighty God, to surrender immediately or be destroyed. I shall

allow you one day in which to give evidence of submission. If such evidence is not forthcoming, I

shall implement this directive by a total attack....'"

Mitch Laskell switched off the short wave set and muttered an oath. He squeezed his way up

through the narrow conning tower and sat on the small deck, leaning back against the rocket-

launcher and dangling his feet in the calm ocean. The night was windless and warm, with the

summer stars eyeing the earth benignly. But despite the warmth, he felt clammy; his hands were

shaking a little as he lit a cigarette.

The newscast—it came as no surprise. The world had known for weeks that the Manlin Bill would

be passed, and that Garson would be given absolute powers to lead the nation through the war. And

his ultimatum to the enemy was no surprise. Garson had long favored an all-out radiological attack,

employing every nuclear weapon the country could muster. Heretofore both sides had limited

themselves to non-rigged atomic explosives, and had refrained from using bacterial weapons.

Garson wanted to take off the boxing-gloves in favor of steel gauntlets. And now it would happen—

the all-out attack, the masterpiece of homicidal engineering, the final word in destruction.

Mitch, reclining in loneliness against the rocket-launcher, blew a thoughtful cloud of cigarette

smoke toward the bright yellow eye of Arcturus, almost directly overhead, and wondered why the

Constellation Boötes suddenly looked like a big club ready to fall on the earth, when it had always

reminded him of a fly-swatter about to slap the Corona Borealis. He searched himself for horror, but

found only a gloomy uneasiness. It was funny, he thought; five years ago men would have been

outraged at the notion of an American absolutism, with one man ruling by decree. But now that it

had happened, it was not to hard to accept. He wondered at it.

And he soon decided that almost any fact could be accepted calmly after it had already happened.

Men would be just as calm after their cities had been reduced to rubble. The human capacity for

calmness was almost unlimited, ex post facto , because the routine of daily living had to go on,

despite the big business of governments whose leaders invoked the Deity in the cause of slaughter.

A voice, echoing up out of the conning tower, made him jump. The command set was barking his

call letters.

"Unit Sugar William Niner Zero, Mother wants you. I say again: Mother wants you. Acknowledge

please. Over."

The message meant: return to base immediately . And it implied an urgency in the use of the code-

word Mother. He frowned and started up, then fell back with a low grunt.

All of his resentment against the world's political jackasses suddenly boiled up inside him as a

personal resentment. There was something about the metallic rasp of the radio's voice that sparked

him to sudden rebelliousness.

"Unit Sugar William Niner Zero, Mother wants you, Mother wants you. Acknowledge immediately.

Over."

He had a good idea what it was all about. All subs were probably being called in for rearmament

with cobalt-rigged atomic warheads for their guided missiles. The submarine force would probably

be used to implement Garson's ultimatum. They would deliver radiological death to Eurasian

coastal cities, and cause the Soviets to retaliate.

Why must I participate in the wrecking of mechanical civilization? he thought grimly.

But a counter-thought came to trouble him: I have a duty to obey; The country gave me birth and

brought me up, and now it's got a war to fight.

He arose and let himself down through the conning tower. He reached for the microphone, but the

receiver croaked again.

"Sugar William Niner Zero, you are ordered to answer immediately. Mother's fixing shortening

bread. Mother wants you. Over."

Shortening bread—big plans, something special, a radiological death-dish for the world. He hated

the voice quietly. His hand touched the microphone but did not lift it.

He stood poised there in the light of a single glow-lamp, feeling his small sub rocking gently in the

calm sea, listening to the quiet purr of the atomics beneath him. He had come to love the little sub,

despite the loneliness of long weeks at sea. His only companion was the sub's small computer which

was used for navigation and for calculations pertaining to the firing of the rocket-missiles. It also

handled the probability mathematics of random search, and automatically radioed periodic position

reports to the home-base computer.

He glanced suddenly at his watch, it was nearly time for a report. Abruptly he reached out and

jerked open the knife-switch in the computer's antenna circuit. Immediately the machine began

clicking and clattering and chomping. A bit of paper tape suddenly licked out of its answer-slot. He

tore it off and read the neatly printed words: MALFUNCTION, OPEN CIRCUIT,

COMMUNICATIONS OUTPUT; INSERT DATA.

Mitch "inserted data" by punching a button labelled NO REPAIR and another labelled RADIO

OUT. One bank of tubes immediately lost its filament-glow, and the computer shot out another bit

of tape inscribed DATA ROGERED. He patted it affectionately and grinned. The computer was just

a machine, but he found it easy to personalize the thing....

The command-set was crackling again. "Sugar William Niner Zero, this is Commsubron Killer. Two

messages. Mother wants you. Daddy has a razor strap. Get on the ball out there, boy! Acknowledge.

Over."

Mitch whitened and picked up the microphone. He keyed the transmitter's carrier and spoke in a

quiet hiss. "Commsubron Killer from Sugar William Niner Zero. Message for Daddy. Sonnyboy

just resigned from the Navy. Go to hell, all of you! Over and out!"

He shut off the receiver just as it started to stutter a shocked reply. He dropped the mike and let it

dangle. He stood touching his fingertips to his temples and breathing in shallow gasps. Had he gone

completely insane?

He sat down on the floor of the tiny compartment and tried to think. But he could only feel a bitter

resentment welling up out of nowhere. Why? He had always gotten along in the Navy. He was the

undersea equivalent of a fighter pilot, and he had always liked his job. They had even said that "he

had the killer instinct"—or whatever it was that made him grin maliciously when he spotted an

enemy sub and streaked in for the kill.

Now suddenly he didn't want to go back. He wanted to quit the whole damn war and run away.

Because of Garson maybe? But no, hadn't he anticipated that before it happened? Why should he

kick now, when he hadn't kicked before? And who was he to decide whether Garson was right or

wrong?

Go back , he thought. There's the microphone. Pick it up and tell Commsubron that you went stir-

crazy for a little while. Tell him wilco on his message. They won't do anything to you except send

you to a nut doctor. Maybe you need one. Go on back like a sane man.

But he drew his hand back from the microphone. He wiped his face nervously. Mitch had never

spent much time worrying about ethics and creeds and political philosophies. He'd had a job to do,

and he did it, and he sometimes sneered at people who could wax starry-eyed about patriotism and

such. It didn't make sense. The old school spirit was okay for football games, and even for small-

time wars, but he had never felt much of it. He hadn't needed it in order to be a good fighter. He

fought because it was considered the "thing to do," because he liked the people he had to live with,

and because those people wouldn't have a good opinion of him if he didn't fight. People never

needed much of a philosophic motive to make them do the socially approved things.

He moistened his lips nervously and stared at the microphone. He was scared. Scared to run away.

He had never been afraid of a fight , frightened maybe, but not afraid. Why now? It takes a lot of

courage to be a coward , he thought, but the word coward made him wince. He groped blindly for a

reasonable explanation of his desire to desert. He wanted to talk to somebody about it, because he

was the kind of man who could think best in an argument. But there was no one to talk to except the

radio.

The computer's keyboard was almost at his elbow. He stared at it for a moment, then slowly typed:

DATA: WIND OUT OF THE NORTH, WAVE FACTOR 0.50 ROUGHNESS SCALE.

INSTRUCTIONS: SUGGEST ACTION.

The machine chewed on the entry noisily for a few seconds, then answered: INSUFFICIENT

DATA.

He nodded thoughtfully. That was his predicament too: insufficient data about his own motives.

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