You could talk as much as you wished about Corps brotherhood, honor, tradition, and gallantry. It remained sentimental guff…No, that was unjust. The Corps had saved the people, their lives and liberties. There could be no higher achievement—for the Corps. But knighthood had once been a noble thing, too; then, lingering after its day, it became a yoke and eventually a farce. The warrior virtues were not ends in themselves. If the warrior could be made obsolete…

Could he? How much could one man, even powered by a machine, hope to do? How much could he even hope to understand?

The moment came upon Diaz. He lay as if blinded by shellburst radiance.

As consciousness returned, he knew first, irrelevantly, what it meant to get religion.

“By God,” he told the universe, “we’re going to try!”

* * *

The battle would resume shortly. At any moment, in fact, some scoutship leading the American force might fire a missile. But when Diaz told his guard he wanted to speak with General Rostock, he was take there within minutes.

The door closed behind him. The living room lay empty, altogether still except for the machine throb, which was not loud since the Ho was running free. Because acceleration might be needful on short notice, there was no spin. Diaz hung weightless as fog. And the Monet flung into his eyes all Earth’s sunlight and summer forests.

“Rostock?” he called uncertainly.

“Come,” said a voice, almost too low to hear. Diaz gave a shove with his foot and flew toward the office.

He stopped himself by grasping the doorjamb. A semicircular room lay before him, the entire side taken up by controls and meters. Lights blinked, needles wavered on dials, buttons and switches and knobs reached across black paneling. But none of that was important. Only the man at the desk mattered, who free-sat with wires running from his head to the wall.

Rostock seemed to have lost weight. Or was that an illusion? The skin was drawn taut across his high cheekbones and gone a dead, glistening white. His nostrils were flared and the colorless lips held tense. Diaz looked into his eyes, once, and away again. He could not meet them. He could not even think about them. He drew a shaken breath and waited.

“You made your decision quickly,” Rostock whispered. “I had not awaited you until after the engagement.”

“I…I didn’t think you would see me till then.”

“This is more important.” Diaz felt as if he were being probed with knives. He could not altogether believe it was his imagination. He stared desperately at paneled instruments. Their nonhumanness was like a comforting hand. They must be for the benefit of maintenance techs, he thought in a distant part of himself. The brain doesn’t need them. “You are convinced,” Rostock said in frank surprise.

“Yes,” Diaz answered.

“I had not expected that. I hoped for little more than your reluctant agreement to study my work.” Rostock regarded him for a still century. “You were ripe for a new faith,” he decided. “I had not taken you for the type. But then, the mind can only use what data are given it, and I have hitherto had small opportunity to meet Americans. Never since I became what I am. You have another psyche from ours.”