THE DESTROYERS
BY RANDALL GARRETT
Any war is made up of a horde of personal tragedies—but thegreater picture is the tragedy of the death of a way of life. For away of life—good, bad, or indifferent—exists because it is dearlyloved....
Illustrated by van Dongen
Anketam stretched his arms out as though he were trying to embrace thewhole world. He pushed himself up on his tiptoes, arched his back, andgave out with a prodigious yawn that somehow managed to express all thecontentment and pleasure that filled his soul. He felt a faint twinge inhis shoulders, and there was a dull ache in the small of his back, bothof which reminded him that he was no longer the man he had been twentyyears before, but he ignored them and stretched again.
He was still strong, Anketam thought; still strong enough to do hisday's work for The Chief without being too tired to relax and enjoyhimself afterwards. At forty-five, he had a good fifteen years morebefore he'd be retired to minor make-work jobs, doing the small choresas a sort of token in justification of his keep in his old age.
He settled his heels back to the ground and looked around at the fieldsof green shoots that surrounded him. That part of the job was done, atleast. The sun's lower edge was just barely touching the westernhorizon, and all the seedlings were in. Anketam had kept his crewsweating to get them all in, but now the greenhouses were all empty andready for seeding in the next crop while this one grew to maturity. Butthat could wait. By working just a little harder, for just a littlelonger each day, he and his crew had managed to get the transplantingdone a good four days ahead of schedule, which meant four days offishing or hunting or just plain loafing. The Chief didn't care how aman spent his time, so long as the work was done.
He thumbed his broad-brimmed hat back from his forehead and looked up atthe sky. There were a few thin clouds overhead, but there was no threatof rain, which was good. In this part of Xedii, the spring rainssometimes hit hard and washed out the transplanted seedlings before theyhad a chance to take root properly. If rain would hold off for anotherten days, Anketam thought, then it could fall all it wanted. Meanwhile,the irrigation reservoir was full to brimming, and that would supply allthe water the young shoots needed to keep them from being burnt by thesun.
He lowered his eyes again, this time to look at the next section overtoward the south, where Jacovik and his crew were still working. Hecould see their bent figures outlined against the horizon, just at thebrow of the slope, and he grinned to himself. He had beaten Jacovik outagain.
Anketam and Jacovik had had a friendly feud going for years, each tryingto do a better, faster job than the other. None of the other supervisorson The Chief's land came even close to beating out Anketam or Jacovik,so it was always between the two of them, which one came out on top.Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other.
At the last harvest, Jacovik had been very pleased with himself whenthe tallies showed that he'd beaten out Anketam by a hundred kilos ofcut leaves. But The Chief had taken him down a good bit when the reportcame through that Anketam's leaves had made more money because they werebetter quality.
He looked all around the horizon. From here, only Jacovik's