Free Arslan by M. J. Engh Page A

face it down there,” she said. Down there was downstairs, among Arslan's men.
    “What's the matter?”
    Her face was anguished. “You know Mattie Benson, don't you?” she said tremulously. “Howard Benson? Mattie was a Schuster. I can't remember their boy's name. He graduated from high school about three years ago and went to Chicago or somewhere.”
    “That would be Paul Benson. I don't remember ever knowing his folks especially. What about them, anyway?”
    She looked away from me desolately. “Well, you know the billet rule...”
    The soldier had been jumped down by the railroad embankment and beaten—how badly, and by how many, nobody seemed to know. He was said to be one of a bunch who had raped a young farm wife near Blue Creek a couple of weeks before. Whether that was true or not didn't matter. Whether the soldier deserved his beating, whether Kraftsville was satisfied or shocked—all that was immaterial. The billet rule had been broken.
    “I'll try to see Arslan.”
    He saw me readily enough, but only to put me under temporary arrest (he actually called it that) till the executions had been carried out. That was interesting, too. Because just what was it he was afraid I might do in the interval?
    We got used to people being killed. Arslan's rules were one hundred percent enforced—which was, after all, a lot better than unpredictable terrorism. He had a peculiarly unattractive way of disposing of the bodies. They would be dragged behind a jeep or truck, like Hector's corpse in the Iliad —dragged all the way out to the city dump, which was three miles on a dirt road, and deposited there. Some of us saw to it that everybody got buried eventually. It wasn't pleasant to collect the remains of your kinfolk from out there, and some people didn't have kin. There were two funeral parlors in town, but of course their hearses had been confiscated. Two months later, they were still discussing deals for suitable conveyances, and meanwhile anybody that wanted to be buried had better have his own transportation.
    But Leland Kitchener had been shrewd enough to trade himself into a wagon and a team of lethargic but durable mules within two weeks of Arslan's arrival. They were too old, slow, and dilapidated to tempt confiscation, but they served Leland's turn all right. They were just about exactly the unmechanized equivalent of the old stave-sided truck he'd limped about his business with, before Arslan. The business was junk and trash generally, but he would haul anything that could take a rough ride. It was Leland who always made the trip to the city dump.
    We could have used a lot more like Leland. It was funny how many people didn't really believe in Arslan—seemed to take him for some sort of optical illusion that would probably disappear when the weather changed. Meanwhile they went on doing what they'd always done, like a bunch of stubborn robots tying to march forward with their noses pressed against a wall. Then there were those who fell all over themselves to lick Arslan's boots before he kicked them. I preferred Leland's attitude.
     

 
    Chapter 5
    You couldn't accuse Arslan of laziness, anyhow. He would be up and working long before daylight, and he didn't really stop till after supper—sometimes long after. He worked , too, he didn't just diddle with papers and assign jobs to other people. He worked, though God only knew what he was working at, and though he was restive as a hot-blooded colt, interrupting his day at odd times for a bath, a shave, a meal. He had the appetite of a field hand in harvest-time, and he washed every meal down with milk. The liquor didn't come out till the day's work was done.
    He'd taken over everything except our bedroom and as much of the kitchen as Luella absolutely required for cooking. Anywhere else in my own house I might be refused admittance—at the very best, I had to share space and facilities with a bunch of enemy aliens—and those three upstairs rooms were