Free Not This August by C.M. Kornbluth Page A

when I had that trouble in the—department store.” The taut strings were relaxing a little. “But sometimes you haven’t got anything else and you have to get to sleep.”
    Uninvited, he refilled his tumbler to the halfway mark. Justin protested: “Man, what’s the good of getting drunk in the afternoon? We have another milking and the corner fence post is sagging; that’ll take both of us to fix. Pour that back in the bottle, will you? You can have it after supper if you can’t sleep.”
    Gribble methodically drank it down. “No point in fooling around,” the little man said gravely. “You pretend you’re somebody else, fine. But you know you aren’t, especially when you’re trying to sleep. You’re still the fellow who closed the door. But that was only half the job, Justin. Funny part is if you do the first half—that is if you’re a fellow like me—then you can’t do the second half. They never thought of that. I must have looked pretty good on the profile. Hard-bitten, waspish executive and all that. But I didn’t fool the combat boys. I went right out of Prudential—you should have seen my office, Justin!—and right into the Pentagon. I told them—what do you say?—I told them: ‘Alert, capable executive desires connection with first-class fighting force. Feels his abilities are not being used to the utmost capacity in present employment.’ I went through the lieutenants and captains like a hot knife through butter. I’ve handled kids like that all my life. G-1 checked me through. You know why? Because G-1’s just office management in uniform. We talked the same language. I was exactly like them so they thought I was good . So I got my appointment with Clardy. Three stars. Colonel Hagen—imagine having a chicken colonel for a secretary —Hagen briefed him first, told him I was talent, hard-boiled talent, kind of talent they needed fast for a battalion, then a regiment, then maybe a division. You go up fast in wartime if you’ve got the stuff. So Clardy talked to me for a few minutes and then he turned to Hagen. As if I wasn’t there. Cussed Hagen out for wasting his time. ‘Good Lord, Colonel, get him something in G-1 or G-4, but don’t ever give him a combat command. Look at him! Can you imagine him committing troops?’
    “You see, Justin? He was on to me in two minutes. They never say it, even among themselves, but they know combat command doesn’t take brains. They talk about brilliant field generals, but when you try to find out what the brilliance was it’s always this: G-1 gets the brilliant general his men; G-2 gets the brilliant general his information, G-3 trains the men and plans the attack, G-4 gets the supplies. Then the brilliant general says ‘Attack!’ and it’s another victory.
    “You know, you don’t need brains to say ‘Attack!’ Plenty of them have brains and they don’t seem to do them any damage, but brains aren’t essential. What you need’s character. When you’ve got character, you say ‘Attack!’ at the right time. And Clardy saw in two minutes that I didn’t have it. That I’d wait and hang back and try to think of ways around when there aren’t any ways around at all. That when G-3 told me it was time to attack I wouldn’t take his word for it, I’d hem and haw and wonder if he really believed what he was telling me. Clardy saw clean through me, Justin. I’m a man who can cheerfully commit a battery of IBM card punches to the fray and that’s all.”
    The little man lurched to his feet and stared, red-eyed, at Justin. Waiting.
    Slowly and unwillingly Justin said: “What do you want, Gribble? What am I supposed to do about all this?”
    Staring, Gribble said: “Very cagy, Justin. But you’ve got to help me. I know you’re committed. I milked the cows this morning. I’m a picture straightener; I always have been. So I started to straighten that bale of hay. Package behind it—heavy package. So heavy it’s got to be gold or lead or