"Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 04 - Tactics of Mistake" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"He's wearing the Alliance Medal of Honor, Mr. Ten."
The sudden, flat, clipped tones of Eachan Khan chopped across the small man's tirade like an ax. In
the new silence Eachan pointed a steady, brown forefinger at the red, white and gold bar at the far right
of the row of ribbons decorating Cletus' jacket.


2
The silence continued a moment at the table.
"Colonel," said Eachan, "what's the trouble with your leg?"
Cletus grinned wryly. "It's part prosthetic about the knee, now," he said. "Perfectly comfortable, but
you can notice it when I walk." He looked back at Pater Ten. "Actually, Mr. Ten's pretty close to being
right about my practical military experience. I only had three months of active duty after being
commissioned, during the last AllianceтАФCoalition brush war on Earth seven years ago."
"But you ended up those three months with the Medal of Honor," said Melissa. The expression with
which she had watched him before had now changed completely. She swung about to Pater Ten. "I
suppose that's one of the few things you don't know anything about, though?"
Pater Ten stared hatingly back at her.
"Do you, Pater?" murmured deCastries.
"There was a Lieutenant Grahame decorated seven years ago by the Alliance," spat out Pater Ten.
"His division had made an attack drop and landing on a Pacific island held by our garrisons. The division
was routed and cut up, but Lieutenant Grahame managed to put together a guerrilla force that was
successful in bottling our people up in their strong fortified areas until Alliance reinforcements came a
month later. He ran into a traveling mine the day before he would have been relieved. They stuck him in
their Academy because he couldn't qualify physically for field duty after that."
There was another, but shorter, moment of silence at the table.
"So," said deCastries, in an oddly thoughtful tone, turning in his fingers the half-filled wineglass on the
tablecloth before him, "it seems the scholar was a hero, Colonel."
"No, Lord no," said Cletus. "The lieutenant was a rash soldier, that's all. If I'd understood things then
as well as I do now, I'd never have run into that mine."
 "But here you areтАФheaded back to where the fighting is!" said Melissa.
"That's true," said Cletus, "but as I said, I'm a wiser man now. I don't want any more medals."
"What do you want, Cletus?" asked Mondar, from the end of the table. The Outbond had been
watching Cletus with an un-Exotic-like intensity for some few minutes now.
"He wants to write sixteen more volumes," sneered Pater Ten.
"As a matter of fact, Mr. Ten's right," said Cletus quietly to Mondar. "What I really want to do is
finish my work on tactics. Only I've found out first I'm going to have to create the conditions they'll apply
to."
"Win the war on Neuland in sixty days!" said Pater Ten. "Just as I said."
"Less time than that, I think," said Cletus, and he gazed calmly about at the sudden changes of
expression on the faces of all but Mondar and Pater Ten.
"You must believe in yourself as a military expert, Colonel," said deCastries. Like Mondar's, his gaze
upon Cletus had grown interested.
"But I'm not an expert," said Cletus. "I'm a scholar. There's a difference. An expert's a man who
knows a great deal about his subject. A scholar's someone who knows all there is that's available to be
known about it."
"It's still only theories," said Melissa. She looked at him puzzledly.
"Yes," he said to her, "but the effective theorist's got an advantage over the practician."
She shook her head, but said nothingтАФsinking back against the cushion of her seat, gazing at him with
her lower Up caught between her teeth.
"I'm afraid I'd have to agree with Melissa again," said deCastries. For a moment his gaze was