The Living Will Envy The Dead (56 page)

That was, but the least of his actions.  He had refugees blocked from entering Ingalls and used deadly force, where necessary, to prevent them from entering the town.  He used torture to make a prisoner – later, additional prisoners – talk and tell him what he needed to know.  He deployed poison gas against the Warriors of the Lord and, finally, executed many of the higher-ranking Warriors personally.  What can one make of such a man?

Finally, Edward Stalker instituted a form of democracy that was, by intent and design, considerably limited.  The results of this linger on today.  It is not clear who was truly to blame.  The person who suggested the core idea – a vote in exchange for military service, later broadened out to a handful of other occupations – remains unknown.  (The original idea came from Robert A. Heinlein, who was clearly not present at Ingalls on the grounds he was dead at the time - an excellent alibi.)  Edward Stalker has been blamed for that by his detractors and has never, significantly, denied it.  There can be little doubt, however, that Stalker was one of the main voices pushing for the implementation of such a scheme and with so many veterans of the Warrior War in the area, it was pushed through with ease. 

And yet, did Stalker have any other choice?  We look back from our safe world and try to imagine what it was like back in those days.  We have it easier than many others do – we have the records taken and saved by Stalker himself, among others – but we cannot imagine the true level of numbing horror.  We see the ruined cities, the areas that are still too hot to enter, and the charred remains of thousands of bodies, but we do not grasp the horrors.  How can we?  It is as beyond our experience as some of our developments would have been beyond Edward Stalker and his comrades.

Was Edward Stalker a monster, as some have suggested, or a man forced by circumstances to do what he had to do to preserve some form of American civilisation?  The question, I fear, remains in your hands.  I await your answers with interest.