Ted didn't understand for a moment. 'I'm not happy about it either, Mr. Little. When I saw that Ray was unconscious, I just—'

'Don't make it worse by lies,' Little cut him off wearily. “I've had the whole story from my patrol leaders, Quantrill. They were all witnesses, and they agree in every detail.'

Tom Schell would not meet Quantrill's glance, though Atkinson and Cameron were more than happy to. Ted, angrily: 'Do they all agree they'd nearly drowned Ray Kenney?'

'I'm sure Ray Kenney would say anything you told him to,' sighed Little, and went on to describe a fictional scene as though he had seen it. Ray, running from a harmless splashing by a good-natured Eagle scout; Wayne, alone, brutally attacked from behind; Joey, trying to reason with the vicious Quantrill after Wayne's aloof departure; Ted Quantrill, hurling stones from shore at the innocent Joey. 'It was the most unworthy conduct I have ever encountered in all my years of scouting,' Little finished.

'You didn't encounter it at all, Mr. Little,' Ted flashed. Anger made him speak too fast, the words running together. 'It didn't even happen.'

Little swayed his head as if dodging a bad smell. 'Oh, Quantrill, look at the lads! I'm sure you'd like to think none of it happened. You may even need — psychological help — to face it,' said Little, leaning forward to brush Ted's shoulder with a pitying hand. 'But we can't have that sort of violence — mental imbalance — in a scout troop, Quantrill.' Almost whispering, nodding earnestly: 'It all happened, son. But we can't let it ever happen again. The best thing I can do is to let you resign from the troop on your own accord.

Wouldn't that be easiest for you? For all of us?'

A sensation of enervating prickly heat passed from the base of Ted Quantrill's skull down his limbs as he let Little's words sink in. Fairness, he saw, was something you gave but should never expect to receive. In the half- light of the single chemlamp he noted the simple deluded self-justification on Joey Cameron's face, the effort to hide exultation on Wayne Atkinson's part. Tom Schell fidgeted silently, staring upward. Ted showed them his palms. “What else can I do, Mr. Little? You wouldn't believe me or Ray. Maybe I should resign. Then I won't have to watch Torquemada Atkinson hit on my friends.'

'You're the hitter, Quantrill,' Joey spat.

Quantrill's head turned with the slow steadiness of a gun turret. 'And don't you ever forget it,' he said carefully, staring past Joey's broken nose into the half-closed eyes.

Purvis Little jerked his head toward a movement at the tent flap. 'Go away, Thad; this doesn't concern you, son.'

'Durn right it does,' sniffled Thad, pushing his small body into the opening. Behind him, Ted saw, other boys were gathered in the near-darkness. “We been listening, Mr. Little.'

A wave-off with both hands from Little: 'Shame on you boys! Go on, now—'

'Shame on them,' Thad blubbered, pointing an unsteady finger at the patrol leaders. He ducked his head as if fearful of a blow but, now helplessly crying, he rushed on: “I seen part of it today an' Teddy's right, those bastids is liars, you don't know diddly squat about what happened — what those big guys been doing all along!'

A chorus of agreement as others streamed into the tent, some crying in release of long-pent frustrations.

Little had to shout for order, but he got it. Thad disabused him of some errors, and Ray's version was similar. The Calhoun twins, Gabe Hooker, even the shy Vardis Lane all clamored to list old injuries; reasons why the nickname 'Torquemada' had stuck. The sum of it shed little glory and less credibility on Wayne Atkinson, who still hoped to brazen his way out.

Finally, Little turned openmouthed toward his patrol leaders, awed by his own suspicions. Joey saw Wayne's steady glare of denial and aped it until—'Wayne lied, Mr. Little,' Tom Schell said quietly. He did not bother to add that he had endorsed every syllable. Maybe no one would notice.

'That's right,' said Joey. If Tom was flexible, Joey could be flexible.

'I see,' said Purvis Little; and the glance he turned on Ted Quantrill brimmed with hatred. Holding himself carefully in check: 'I misjudged you, Quantrill — and some others, too. Forget what I said, but now I have to talk to my patrol leaders and,' between gritted teeth, 'the rest of you please, please get out.'

Chapter Thirteen

The murmur of voices from Little's tent was distant, carrying only sad phatic overtones. Ted, quarreling internally with new unwelcome wisdom, thought Ray Kenney asleep until Ray said, 'I'm glad we got you out of that.'

'After you got me into it? The least you could do — but thanks.' It had not escaped Ted that his friend had asked for gratitude without once giving it.

'We kept you from getting booted out,' Ray insisted.

'Getting out anyway, soon as we get home.'

'You can't; you're our leader.'

Silence. Ted Quantrill knew that he could lead; knew also that he did not want followers.

Ray, through a yawn: 'Things'll be different now that Little understands what happened.'

'He doesn't. He never will,' Ted replied, and discouraged further talk. Ted knew that with one hostile glance, Purvis Little had given him a valuable discovery: most people will hate you for identifying their illusions.

The lesson was worth remembering; the whole day was memorable. Ted Quantrill wondered why he felt no elation, why he wished he were alone so that he could cry, why it was that he felt like crying. He had not yet learned that new wisdom is a loss of innocence, nor that weeping might be appropriate at childhood's end.

Chapter Fourteen

While Quantrill slept in Tennessee, savants in Peking and New Delhi gauged America's response. Once, India would have looked to Moscow for counsel and arms, but no more. The RUS had been forced to cut foreign aid, and to yield more autonomy to the predominantly Islamic peoples of her southern flanks from Lake Baikal to the Black Sea. One sign of her troubles, as the RUS well knew, was the damnable tariqat.

Tariqats, Moslem secret societies, were flourishing in the 1980's while Russian-speaking USSR bureaucrats sweated to modernize Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, sprawling Kazakhstan, reluctant Afghanistan. The tariqat was a far older tradition than Marxism, more staunchly rooted, in some ways harsher in its discipline. And Allah met His payrolls: despairing RUS bureaucrats joked that their earthly rewards could not match baklavah in the sky. No wonder that first the USSR, then the RUS, became alarmed as tariqats flourished in the Islamic RUS republics. The tariqat was a broad covert means to reject Russianization, and RUS moslems embraced it. Moscow knew her underbelly was soft on Islam, and worried about ties between its tariqats and the AIR next door.

Directly to the south of the RUS lay the Associated Islamic

Republics, in a vast crescent from Morocco to Iran, abutting India which was still officially the world's largest democratic nation; unofficially a polyglot nation in the process of trading chaos for Islam.

Since the 1960's, pundits had been predicting that India '… can't keep this up much longer.' Some observers meant her overpopulation; India's women, a miracle of dreadful fecundity, steadily produced mouths that could not be fed, much less find employment. Some referred to India's acceptance of fourteen official languages. Still others indicated India's rejection of western ties while fumbling away her parliamentary democracy.

Underlying India's manifold ills was the central fact that, until recent years, three-quarters of her citizens espoused caste restrictions in some form of Hinduism. But recently, tens of millions ofharijans—untouchables scorned by ruling castes — had become literate, and at that point began an accelerating conversion to Islam urged on by India's already prominent Moslem minority. One might almost suggest certain parallels between the fast-rising conservative religious movements of the two most

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