The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Invisible Enemy, by Arnold Castle

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Title: The Invisible Enemy

Author: Arnold Castle

Release Date: August 2, 2021 [eBook #65980]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVISIBLE ENEMY ***

The Invisible Enemy

By Arnold Castle

At fifteen he was sent to war to fight an
enemy he couldn't understand. But more puzzling
was the victory to be won—after he met defeat!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
October 1954
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It was the day.

The automobile with its three passengers moved slowly along the quiet morning street. There was no need for hurry.

The boy's father was soberly recalling his own war experiences, wondering how similar Tom's would be. The mother was remembering vividly fragments of films, of facsimile reports, of forgotten conversations, envisioning her son cringing pathetically in a shallow foxhole as the penultimate weapon burst into grisly glory in the dark dawn sky. Tom's own thoughts were tense, but he managed to conceal his nervousness from his parents.

"We're here, son," his father announced calmly, pulling the car up to the curb.

"Dear, can't we drive around the block just once?" his mother asked, her voice almost a whisper.

"We're early."

"No, mom," Tom said crisply. He opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

"Want us to go in, son?"

"No thanks, Dad."

"But we want to, Tom," his mother said. "Of course, we'll go in!"

"There's no need for you to. I'm already registered," he told her. He reached out to grip his father's hand.

"Tom!" his mother protested.

"Don't worry about me." He kissed her hurriedly, and was relieved when his father drove away without waiting for him to start up the steps. He knew that they would worry, and he turned abruptly, forcing his attention away.

The day was bright and a chill breeze swept in from the Pacific. Atop a distant hill eucalyptus glimmered in the white sunlight. Inscribed over the portal of the modest building which he now faced were the words:

DEPARTMENT OF PEACE
"THAT THE AGE OF
VIOLENCE MAY FOREVER
REMAIN HISTORY"

Bullets splattered into the mound in front of the foxhole, sending a dense spray of dust and gravel into the pit. Tom spit out the mouthful of dirt and cursed.

"They comin'?" the soldier next to him asked, waking slightly.

"No." Tom told him gloomily. "But they know where we are."

"Maybe they'll try mortar. Think they'll try mortar?"

Tom shrugged. "Go on back to sleep. I'm watching."

The other was several years older than he, and a corporal, but not very bright. Still, it was better than being alone. The worst thing he could imagine was having to face the enemy utterly alone. If only he could remember what the enemy looked like, it would not be so bad.

He forgot so much. Sometimes it seemed like he had been in combat just a few days. But other times it felt like he had been up there forever, waiting, moving forward, moving backward, thinking that at last he was beginning to get the picture, but not sure, never sure, never sure of anything. If only he could recall something beside the immediate present. Then maybe the situation would start to make a little sense.

He knew why he was fighting, vaguely. It was to safeguard certain inalienable rights, which ones he could not exactly remember. The odd thing was that the enemy was fighting for the same goal—he sensed that intuitively. But who was the enemy? He thought he had known once, but that had been quite a while ago. What did they look like? He would have to ask someone.

An infrared flare blossomed some distance down the valley. Tom adjusted his binoculars and scanned the slope. Nothing. Remotely the monotonous rumble of atomic artillery began pounding through the night. From far away echoed the transient whisper of a jet.

Now his legs were beginning to get cramped. That happened every night, and he knew that no matter which way he bent them the pain would continue to grow. However, there was always the consolation that toward morning they would become numb.

He opened his one remaining ration can, tore back the layers of thermofoil insulation, and started devouring the warm lamb stew. The dull staccato of automatic fire commenced far down the valley. Somebody screamed.

Tom contemplated his own flashless weapon, trying to recall what he had been taught about its principle of expulsion. That had been so far back. A year? Two? He did not remember.

It was time for the corporal to take over the watch, but Tom decided to give him another ten minutes. Wearily, he raised the binoculars to his eyes, pushed the switch. The battery was about exhausted and he replaced it. Overhead a flare was drifting downward, and he watched as it illuminated the murky battle ground.

"Light up!" the platoon sergeant growled.

The troops had been waiting for a quarter of an hour beside the road. Tom had long since learned the futility of speculation. But conversation was vital and there had to be a topic.

"Maybe they're trying to get trucks for us," he muttered to the soldier next to him.

"Maybe they're plannin' a picnic for us," the other suggested.

"Trucks. Picnics. You guys make everything too complicated," a third soldier remarked. "Every time something happens you figure out a different reason for it. Not me. The way I see it, there's just one cause for everything they tell us to do or don't do, say or don't say, think or don't think. And that's discipline. Look at it that way and you're always one ahead of 'em."

"I like the idea of a picnic," the other replied obstinately. "Only it's supposed to be a surprise, and that's why they don't tell us nothin."

"Okay, you guys. Strip those butts!"

Tom hoisted the straps of his pack onto his aching shoulders and fell into file behind the other two. The heel of his left boot was wearing badly and he could sense the strain on his ankle. He tried placing his weight on the ball of his foot, but that made him limp. Then he had no time for concern with small discomforts, for the column was scattering at the distant whoosh of jets.

Tom, however, got no farther than the ditch.

The soldier who liked picnics had stumbled onto a discarded recoilless rifle shell ten feet from the road. It exploded at the contact. Tom did not hear the jets roar past, for the pain that had burst in his leg was deafening. Momentarily he experienced a curious detached awareness of both the agony of the wound and the contortions into which he was throwing his body. Then he collapsed on the weed-matted gravel, unconscious.

He woke to find two medical aid men seated beside him. The pain had lessened and the wound was all but covered. He watched furtively as a corporal completed the job of daubing the gummy white substance from a freshly opened can of plastoderm into a raw gash below his right knee. He hoped none of the ligaments had been torn, since they would take a lot longer to evolve from the undifferentiated surrogate than would the rest of the tissues. Tentatively he flexed his foot muscles; they seemed all right.

"Just lean back, buddy. You're okay, now," he was informed.

"How about the jets? We hit any of them?" he asked.

"Couldn't tell, but I don't think so. They got what they were after, though."

"Yeah? What was that?"

"Convoy of trucks comin' to pick us up. That's what I hear, anyway."

Tom was silent for a while. Then he asked: "I'm not going to have any trouble with that, am I?"

"No, but take it easy for the next couple of days. I'll put a bandage on it, but it takes time for that stuff to gel."

He went to work on the bandage, while his companion started packing up the apparatus. Five minutes later they had gone.

Tom lay thinking. None of his questions had yet been answered. He still could not think coherently about even the recent past. And nobody had been able to state clearly just whom they were fighting, though everyone agreed on the motives for the war: they were defending freedom against tyranny—it was as simple and as basic as that. However, it somehow left Tom unsatisfied.

"Well, what did I tell you?" the soldier next to him remarked. "Discipline. No trucks. No picnic. Just discipline. Say, how about a cigarette. I must have dropped mine in the scramble."

"Sure." Tom threw him a mashed, half-empty pack.

"Hey, thanks." He lit one, carefully buttoning the rest in a pocket of his fatigue jacket. "Thanks a lot."

"Okay, you guys," came the hoarse command. "Strip them butts! We're movin'."

"Discipline," the soldier muttered bitterly, crushing the cigarette into the gravel. "Discipline."

The night was quiet, too quiet. There were remote and occasional atomic artillery bursts. But no other noise.

The two other members of the patrol were immediately ahead of Tom. But they progressed slowly and made little sound. Tom crept forward a single notch, looking up only when he had sunk again into the grass. On either side there was nothing but blackness. Once more he squirmed forward with his boots and forearms. Still there was only the quiet and darkness of night. He lay there for a while, waiting and wondering.

He had ceased pondering those questions which had most concerned him during the earlier days. Now he asked himself only when would it be over. Nothing else any longer seemed to matter. But more and more frequently there had come to his mind a single irrelevant memory. It was an image of a clear day, of a cool breeze off the ocean, of a crest of green and gold eucalyptus on a faraway hill. It had something to do with home. But that was all he knew of it, and it was all he could recall of home.

A burst of flashless automatic fire from somewhere up the ridge brought a scream from the soldier in front of him and sent him writhing down the slope. Tom lowered himself till he was on a level with the sight of his carbine, then started scanning the rise. A moment later he spotted the greenish glow of the sniper's infrared beam, and flipping the safety onto automatic, he squeezed the trigger. Rapidly he replaced the clip and waited. After several moments, he uncautiously flooded the terrain with his own light. A mere hundred feet away was a sprawling greenish form. One of the enemy. A good and dead one.

It was ten minutes before he heard the remaining member of the patrol working his way back.

"Good boy!" came a whisper. "You got him."

"What about—"

"What do you think?"

"Are we going back?"

"Sure. There ain't no troops up there. That's what we came to find out. Maybe a few snipers is all."

They started crawling the way they had come. But this time it was more tedious because of the abrasions and bruises that had been incurred. Dawn was a pastey gray in the sky behind them when they at last neared the lines.

"Something funny," the sergeant muttered suspiciously, rising to his knees.

"What's wrong," Tom asked wearily.

"I don't know. Wait here." Tom waited till the sky threatened to become light, then began following. He continued along the route which he felt must lead to the lines, but after some minutes began to feel a sense of panic. The landmarks were all wrong and the cloud-strewn sky gave no indication of direction. Then, from the other side of a low, rocky hillock came the unmistakable sound of approaching troops. Running forward to the edge, he stopped abruptly as he found himself face to face with the enemy.

Suddenly all the hate and guilt he had ever known exploded into his awareness. The face before him was a meaningless blur, but he did not need to know the enemy to loathe him. His carbine was in his hands, the safety off, the barrel lowered, the trigger squeezed—but the rifle failed to fire.

The cry of the enemy was a wordless oath of anger, the bayonet a glinting sliver of death, the pain in his side the ultimate peak of agony. But as he fell back onto the rocks, he sensed something beyond rage in the bright young eyes of his destroyer. He sensed hope—the possibility of peace and even of happiness—for those anger-maddened eyes had been his own.

He woke upon a bed in a small white-walled room. It was too soon yet to try to think things over. So he consciously relaxed and contemplated such immediate and basic pleasures as breathing and observing the distant sun-gilt eucalyptus through the single broad window. For the present, the experience of life itself was sufficient.

When at last an attendant entered, followed by a nurse, Tom felt like talking. He was frustrated in this by a thermometer, which the woman allowed to remain in his mouth throughout the entire check-up. When she had finally concluded her routine, Tom said: "I'm feeling pretty good, doctor. Is it all right if I leave?"

"I'm just a mere psychotechnician," the man smiled. "You'll have to check with Miss Laughton."

"Fit as a fiddle," the nurse responded, gathering up her equipment.

"My bayonet wound okay?" Tom asked anxiously, and was immediately startled to find he could refer to the incident with amusement.

"It is if you can talk about it," she replied with a flicker of sympathy on her dry expressionless face.

"So it was a bayonet," the man commented after the nurse had left. "That's quite rare, you know. Usually it's a bullet or a shell fragment."

"Don't you decide—I mean, don't you set it all up beforehand?"

"Oh, no. Electrohypnosis merely instigates certain motivational and situational patterns. The instrumentation and environment is entirely the product of your own personality. The more feasible, consistent and coherent the subjective aspects, the more adaptable, rational and stable must be the subject."

"What about the bayonet?"

"You chose that, I would suppose, because you not only weren't afraid of meeting the enemy, but actually wanted to. We'll go into that later. Now I want you to relate everything you can remember."

Tom waited while the other set up a recorder. It took less than twenty minutes to narrate every detail he could recall.

"Well that'll be enough for today. We do want you to report back in a week or so, just to find out how this affects your normal activities. The receptionist will make an appointment for you. Your clothes are in the closet."

Tom dressed and started along the corridor, stopping only once for a brief glimpse of the machine which had been his battleground. A boy he had seen occasionally at school was approaching, and they nodded at one another.

"You been through it?" the boy asked.

"Yeh," Tom told him, a little uneasily.

"I'm just going in. How is it?" Tom noticed the other boy's collar was damp with perspiration and his eyes were somewhat watery. "Is it pretty rough?"

"Well, it's—" Tom returned uncomfortably. "It's just like war."

He turned away as the other winced and swallowed nervously. The receptionist made his appointment and he strode to the doorway. Already the horrors of a mere hour before seemed years in the past, and he wondered, as he proceeded down the steps into the same bright day he had left so long ago, how those vague and distant imaginings could possibly affect his future behavior. He readily admitted that he would be far less inclined to defend the concept of war than he would have been earlier. But surely it was possible that, under certain conditions, he might find himself in a situation where he had no alternative to violence. Those who had been through it never seemed to get into fights like other kids did, but that could be simply a matter of growing up.

Then why, he wondered, was electrophynosis universally required and the keystone of the armistice which had concluded the Third World War? With the exception of a few thoroughly socialized individuals whose capacity for occasional force was necessary to the maintenance of law and order, every male human being of fifteen underwent the experience. So there must be some aspect of its consequences which he had overlooked.

For some reason a memory of three small boys playing soldier on an autumn dusk slipped in among his thoughts. How disenchantingly different had been the unreal realism of the dream. With an amused start it occurred to him that the same genuine Captain America Infrared Electronic Sniperkit that had seen him through those childhood skirmishes had accompanied him into combat that morning. And for an instant he wondered if such a thing as an infrared flare actually did exist.

Stepping onto the sidewalk, he turned toward home. He would be there in just a little over three hours after his parents had left him. They could not have worried too much in so short a period. Still, he decided, it would be best to call them. Everyone had heard rumors of subjects coming out of electrohypnosis with psychosomatic or neurotic after effects. And, while these had been authoritatively discounted, it would be typical of his mother to imagine her son the exception.

There was a drugstore on the next corner and Tom headed toward it. He did not notice the two younger school acquaintances until they had crossed the street and halted in his path. He had never been on cordial terms with either of them, and was in no mood for their banter today.

"Well, look who's back from the wars!" the more aggressive of the pair exclaimed. "Where's your medals, Colonel?"

"Yeah!" the other gibed. "And what happened to your crutches?"

Tom regretted very much not having left the building by a rear exit. Their reaction to meeting him in that manner, considering their determination not to exhibit any anxiety over their own imminent ordeals, was bound to be antagonistic. However, his own responses had not yet stabilized adequately following the experience to permit much tolerance. He ignored them and started on.

"Come on, Tom," the first persisted, stepping swiftly into his path. "Tell us about it. How many of 'em did you get?"

"Bet he didn't get any. Bet he just buried himself in his foxhole till it was all over. Bet he was scared stiff."

"Naw, not the Colonel. He was out there in front all the time. Weren't you, Colonel?"

Irritation flamed into anger. Raising his hand, he was about to push them aside when the hot searing pain of the bayonet struck him, hurling him back against the wall. For an uncomprehending moment he leaned immobile, his mouth gaping, his eyes awed. Then, realizing the only way out, he relaxed. The agony subsided and vanished. So that was it, he thought bitterly. So that was the ultimate weapon—not the indoctrination. For the rest of his life he was to be burdened with the possibility of that vivid torture whenever he so much as considered using force.

The boys had backed away apprehensively, and now were moving on down the street with frequent backward glances. It made no difference to him. For the present, they were of another age, an age of violence, an age which he had outgrown.

The drugstore was crowded, but Tom made his way toward the rear without noticing the customers. His thoughts were soberly and intently focused on the future. Perhaps, he considered, by the time his great grandchildren were men a way of life would have been created which involved neither the inevitability of war nor the alternate necessity for an invisible, poised bayonet. And so far as his own life was concerned, if the latter meant that he could return home, instead of trudging back to the barracks, then he accepted it gracefully. The price of peace was bound to be high, he reflected, since man had never before been able to afford it.

Sliding into the phonebooth and pushing a coin into the slot, Tom began dialing.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVISIBLE ENEMY ***

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