Read Online Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein - Free Book Online Page A

began to think of
    himself as, if not Napoleon, at least as a modern Swamp Rat, or Sandino,
    striking through the night at the professional soldiers and fading away.
    But Mitsui was right.
    The television receiver was used regularly, with full recording, to pick up
    anything that the overlords had to broadcast to their slaves. It had become
    something of a custom to meet in the common room at eight in the evening to
    listen to the regular broadcast in which new orders were announced to the
    population. Ardmore encouraged it; the "hate session" it inspired was, he
    believed, good for morale.
    Two nights before the projected raid they were gathered as usual. The
    ugly, broad face of the usual propaganda artist was quickly replaced by
    another and older PanAsian whom he introduced as the "heavenly custodian
    of peace and order." The older man came quickly to the point. The American
    servants of a provincial government had committed the hideous sin of
    rebelling against their wise rulers and had captured the sacred person of the
    governor and held him prisoner in his own palace. The soldiers of the
    heavenly emperor had brushed aside the insane profaners in the course of
    which the governor had most regrettably gone to his ancestors.
    A period of mourning was announced, commencing at once, which would
    be inaugurated by permitting the people of the province to expiate the sins of
    their cousins. The television scene cut from the room from which he spoke.
    It came to rest on great masses of humanity, men, women, children,
    huddled, jammed, behind barbed wire. The pick-up came down close enough
    to permit the personnel of the Citadel to see the blind misery on the faces of
    the crowd, the wept-out children, the mothers carrying babies, the helpless
    fathers.
    They did not have to watch those faces long. The pick-up panned over
    the packed mob, acre on acre of helpless human animals, then returned to a
    steady close-up of one section.
    They used the epileptigenic ray on them. Now they no longer resembled
    anything human. It was, instead, as if tens of thousands of monstrous
    chickens had had their necks wrung all at once and had been thrown into the
    same pen to jerk out their death spasms. Bodies bounded into the air in
    bone-breaking, spine-smashing fits. Mothers threw their infants from them, or
    crushed them in uncontrollable, viselike squeeze.
    The scene cut back to the placid face of the Asiatic dignitary. He
    announced with what seemed to be regret in his voice that penance for sins
    was not sufficient, it was necessary also to be educational, in this case to the
    extent of one in every thousand.
    Ardmore did a quick calculation in his head. A hundred fifty thousand
    people! It was unbelievable.
    But it was soon believed. The pick-up cut again, this time to a residential
    street in an American city. It followed a squad of PanAsian soldiers into the
    living room of a family. They were gathered about a television receiver,
    plainly stunned by what they had just seen. The mother was huddling a
    young girl child to her shoulder, trying to quiet her hysteria. They seemed
    stupefied, rather than frightened, when the soldiers burst into their home. The
    father produced his card without argument; the squad leader compared it
    with a list, and the soldiers attended to him.
    They had evidently been instructed to use a method of killing that was
    not pretty.
    Ardmore shut off the receiver. "The raid is off," he announced. "Go to
    bed, all of you. And each of you take a sleeping pill tonight. That's an order!"
    They left at once. No one said anything. After they were gone, Ardmore
    turned the receiver back on and watched it through to the end. Then he sat
    alone for a long time, trying to get his thoughts back into coherence. Those
    who order sleeping drafts won't take them.

    CHAPTER FOUR
    Ardmore kept very much to himself for the next two days, taking his
    meals in his quarters, and refusing anything but the briefest interviews. He
    saw