Arslan by M. J. Engh

your side, Hunt,” I told him. “Forget about everybody else.”
    Usually his answer was silence; but once he brought himself to say, “I know her opinions.”
    “Forget about opinions. And when you do see her, never mind what she says to you. When it comes to family, those things don't really matter—not if you can remember they're just words.”
    “Sticks and stones,” he said.
    In a way, Arnold Morgan had been right when he called Hunt mature, but not in a very important way. Compared to most of his classmates, with their raw country boyishness, he'd always seemed both younger and older. But that had been superficial, just the self-confident sophistication of any well-bred child. Now he was definitely, irreversibly older. It had been close, but Hunt had proved me right. He had had just barely the necessary toughness to get him through. He didn't blush any more.
    Hunt would survive, no doubt of that. What I worried about now was what kind of a person he would survive as. He listened when he was talked to—listened seriously but distantly. There was a kind of impediment in his communication. He volunteered practically nothing, and when he answered a question it was most often with a shrug, a sidelong look, or a cool stare.
    Toward Arslan, he had the manner of a well-trained servant—sometimes he was disconcertingly like the little orderly. Arslan was the sun around which Hunt had to revolve, and it was only on the side illuminated by Arslan that he showed much sign of life. On that unique subject he was able and willing to talk, or at least answer questions articulately. And then again he would clam up, and I couldn't get any more out of him except a shrug and “He doesn't tell me everything.”
    Either he told him an almighty lot, or Hunt had a very fertile imagination and didn't mind farming it. “He says he has American troops in Russia and China, and Chinese troops in Europe, and European troops in the Middle East, and Arab and Israeli troops in Africa. All commanded by his officers.”
    “Hunt, I don't see how he could have that many officers.”
    “That's what he told me.”
    “Why does he stay in Kraftsville? Has he told you that?”
    One of the things I'd noticed about Hunt lately was that he held his head upright even when he bowed it. His shoulders might hunch and droop, his eyes and chin might sink, but his spine stayed straight and tall. Now he lowered those big eyes and shrugged his little shrug, and his mouth stirred briefly.
    “Of course,” I said, “we don't have to believe everything he says.”
    “Free will,” he observed constrainedly.
    “And common sense. If he'd really conquered the world, would he set up his capital in Kraftsville, Illinois?”
    He took on a struggling look—trying to enunciate an answer that would suit me—but after a minute he gave it up and relaxed in silence.
    “And what's he doing with those troops, if he commands them all?”
    “Dividing the world into small, self-sufficient communities,” he parroted patiently.
    “How ready does he have to be, General?”
    Arslan looked up blankly from his coffee-tableful of papers. He had sent Hunt upstairs a few minutes before, and he had called for a bottle, but it still stood unopened. Lately he had started to break his unstated rule of no hard liquor while there was still work to do. “How ready?”
    “How strong. Strength was the idea, wasn't it?”
    He fingered the top of his bottle. “He is ready now,” he said finally. “Let him go to his people.”
    I wasted no time setting up a meeting between Hunt and Jean—and when it came right down to it, Hunt raised no objection. They talked in what had been the music room at school and was now an office supply storeroom. (The Turkistanis used a considerable amount of memo paper.) Hunt was back in twenty minutes, and I felt better as soon as I saw his face. There was a freshness and childhood there that had been missing for too long. And a vulnerability. He didn't