Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 05 (5 page)

"Outpost Four-nine-three, Alliance-Coalition Expeditionary Force to the Dorsai. Identify the
person you call the Mayor of Foralie Town."

"Amanda Morgan," said Amanda, clearly, to the com equipment, "of the household ap Morgan, Foralie District."

"Hold. Do not attempt to land until we check your identification. Repeat. Hold. Do not attempt to
land until given permission."

The speaker was abruptly silent again. The pilot checked the landing pattern for the craft. They waited.

After several minutes the order came to bring themselves in.

Two transport-pale, obviously Earth-native, privates in Coalition uniforms were covering the aircraft hatch with cone rifles, as Amanda preceded the pilot out on to the pad. A thin, serious-faced young Coalition lieutenant motioned the two of them to a staff car.

"Where do you think you're taking us?" Amanda demanded. "Who are you? What're you doing here, anyway?"

"It'll all be explained at your town hall, ma'm," said the lieutenant. "I'm sorry, but I'm not permitted to answer questions."

He got into the
staff
car with them and tapped the driver on the shoulder. They drove to town, through streets empty
of
any human figures not in uniforms. With the emptiness of the streets was a stillness. On the north edge of the town, on the upslope of the meadow which Amanda had mentioned to Jen-na, Amanda could glimpse beehive-shaped cantonment-huts of bubble plastic being blown into existence in orderly rows—and from this area alone came a sound, distant but real, of voices and activities. Amanda felt the prevailing wind from the south on the back of her neck, and scented the faint odors of the fresh riverwater and the dump, carried by it, although the manufactory itself was silent.

The staff car reached the town hall. The pilot was left in the outer office, but Amanda was ushered in past guards to the office that had been Piers', and was now hers. There, a large map of the district had been imaged on one wall and several officers of grades between major and brigadier general were standing about in a discussion that seemed very close to argument. Only one person in the room wore civilian clothing, and this was a tall, slim man seated at Amanda's desk, tilted back in its chair, apparently absorbed in studying the map that was imaged.

He seemed oddly remote from the rest, isolated by position or authority and willing to concentrate on the map, leaving the officers to their talk. The expression on his face was thoughtful, abstract. Few men Amanda had met in her long life could have legitimately been called handsome, but this man was. His features were so regular as to approach un-naturalness. His dark hair was touched with grey only at the temples, and his high forehead seemed to shadow deep-set eyes, so dark that they appeared inherently unreadable. If it had not been for those eyes and an air of power that seemed to wrap him like light from some invisible source, he might have looked too pretty to be someone to reckon with. Watching him now, however, Amanda had few doubts as to his ability, or his identity.

"Sir—" began the lieutenant who had brought Amanda in; but the brigadier to whom he spoke, glancing up, interrupted him, speaking directly to Amanda.

"You're the Mayor, here? What were you doing away from the town? Where are all your townspeople—"

"General," Amanda spoke slowly. She did hot have to invent the anger behind her words. "Don't ask me questions. I'll do the asking. Who're you? What made you think you could walk into this office without my permission? Where'd you come
from
? And what're you doing here, under arms, without getting authority, first—from the island authorities at South Point, and from us?"

"I think you understand all right—" began the General.

"I think I don't," said Amanda. "You're here illegally and I'm still waiting for an explanation—and an apology for pushing yourself into my office without leave."

The brigadier's mouth tightened, and the skin wrinkled and puffed around his eyes.

"Foralie District's been occupied by the Coalition-Alliance authorities," he said. "That's all you need to know. Now, I want some answers—"

"I'll need a lot more of an explanation than that," broke in Amanda. "Neither the Alliance nor the Coalition, nor any Coalition-Alliance troops, have any right I know of to be below parking orbit. I want your authority for being here. I want to talk to your superior —and I want both those things now!"

"What kind of a farce do you think you're playing?" The words burst out of the brigadier. "You're under occupation—"

"General," said a voice from the desk, and every head in the room turned to the man who sat there.

"Perhaps I ought to talk to the Mayor."

"Yes sir," muttered the brigadier. The skin around his eyes was still puffy, his face darkened now with blood-gorged capillaries. "Amanda Morgan, this is Dow deCastries, Supreme Commander of Alliance-Coalition forces."

"I didn't imagine he could be anyone else," said

Amanda. She took a step that brought her to the outer edge of her desk, and looked across it at Dow.

"You're sitting in my chair," she said.

Dow rose easily to his feet and stepped back, gesturing to the now-empty seat.

"Please…" he said.

"Just stay on your feet. That'll be good enough for now," said Amanda. She made no move to sit down herself "You're responsible for this?"

"Yes, you could say I am." Dow looked at her thoughtfully. "General Amorine—" he spoke without looking away from Amanda—"the Mayor and I probably had better talk things over privately."

"Yes sir, if that's what you want."

"It is. It is, indeed." Now Dow did look at the brigadier, who stepped back

"Of course, sir," Amorine turned on the lieutenant who had brought Amanda in. "You checked her for weapons, of course?"

"Sir… I—" The lieutenant was flustered. His stiff embarrassment pleaded that you did not expect a woman Amanda's age to go armed.

"I don't think we need worry about that, General" Dew's voice was still relaxed; but his eyes were steady on the brigadier.

"Of course, sir." Amorine herded his officers out. The door closed behind them, leaving Amanda and Dow standing face to face.

"You're sure you won't sit down?" asked Dow.

"This isn't a social occasion," said Amanda.

"No," said Dow. "Unfortunately, no it isn't. It's a serious situation, in which your whole planet has been placed under Alliance-Coalition control. Effectively, what you call the Dorsai no longer exists."

"Hardly," said Amanda.

"You have trouble believing that?" said Dow. "I assure you—"

"I've no intention of believing it, now, or later," Amanda said. "The Dorsai isn't this town. It isn't any number of towns just like it. It's not even the islands and the sea—it's the people."

"Exactly," said Dow, "and the people are now under control of the Alliance-Coalition. You brought it on yourself, you know. You've squandered your ordinary defensive force on a dozen other worlds, and you've got nothing but non-combatants left here. In short, you're helpless. But that's not my concern. I'm not interested in your planet, or your people, as people. It's just necessary we make sure they aren't led astray again by another dangerous madman like Cletus Grahame."

"Madman?" echoed Amanda, dryly.

Dow raised his eyebrows.

"Don't you think he was mad in thinking he could succeed against the two richest powers on the most powerful human world in existence?" He shook his head. "But there's not much point in our arguing politics, is there? All I want is your cooperation."

"Or else what?"

"I wasn't threatening," Dow said mildly.

"Of course you were," said Amanda. She held his eyes with her own for a long second. "Do you know your Shakespeare?"

"I did once."

"Near the end of Macbeth, when Macbeth himself hears a cry in the night that signals the death of Lady Macbeth," Amanda said, "he says '
there was a time my senses would have cool'd to hear a night-shriek
…'remember it? Well, that time passes for all of us, with the years. You'll probably have a few to go yet to find that out for yourself; but if and when you do you'll discover that eventually you outlive fear, just as you outlive a lot of other things. You can't bully me, you can't scare me—or anyone else in Foralie District with enough seniority to take my place."

It was his turn now to consider her for a long moment without speaking.

"All right," he said. "I'll believe you. My only interest, as I say, is in arresting Cletus Grahame and taking him back to Earth with me."

"You occupy a whole world just to arrest one man?" Amanda said.

"Please." He held up one long hand. "I thought we were going to talk straightforwardly with each other. I want Cletus. Is he on the Dorsai?"

"Not as far as I know."

"Then I'll go to his home and wait for him to come to me," said Dow. He glanced at the map. "That'll be Foralie—the homestead marked there near your own Fal Morgan?"

"That's right."

"Then I'll move up there, now. Meanwhile I want to know what the situation is here, clearly. Your able fighting men are all off planet. All right. But there's no one in this town who isn't crippled, sick, or over sixty. Where are all your healthy young women, your teenagers below military age, and anyone else who's effective?"

"Gone off out of town," said Amanda.

Dow's black eyes seemed to deepen.

"That hardly seems normal. I assume you had warnings of us, at least as soon as we were in orbit.

I'd be very surprised if it wasn't news of our being in orbit that brought you back here in that aircraft just now. You wouldn't have messaged ahead, telling your children and able-bodied adults to scatter and hide?"

"No," said Amanda. "I didn't; and no one here gave any such direction."

"Then maybe you'll explain why they're all gone?"

"Do you want a few hundred reasons?" Amanda said. "It's the end of summer. The men are gone. This town is just a supply and government center. Who's young and wants to hang around here all day? The younger women living in town are up visiting at the various homesteads where they've got friends and there's some social life. The babies and younger children went with their mothers. The older children are off on team exercises."

"Team exercises?"

"Military team exercises," said Amanda, bluntly and with grim humor, watching him. "Otherwise known as 'creeping and crawling'. This is a world where the main occupation, once you're grown, is being a mercenary soldier. So this is our version of field trips. It's good exercise, the youngsters get some academic credit for it when they go back to school in a few weeks, and it's a chance for them to get away from adult supervision and move around on their own, camping out."

Dow frowned.

"No adult supervision?"

"Not a lot," said Amanda. "There's one adult-called an "Ancient", with each team, in case of emergencies; but in most cases the team makes its own decision about what kind of games it'll play with other teams in the same area, where it'll set up camp, and so forth."

"These children," Dow was still frowning, "are they armed?"

"With real weapons? They never have been."

"Are they likely to get any wild notions about doing something to our occupying forces—"

"Commander," said Amanda, "Dorsai children don't get wild notions about military operations. Not if they expect to stay Dorsai as adults."

"I see," said Dow. He smiled slowly at her. "All the same, I think we better get them and the able-bodied adults back into town here, where we can explain to them what the situation is and what they should or shouldn't do. Also, there's a few of your other people who're conspicuous by their absence. For example, where are your medical people?"

"We've got one physician and three meds, here in Foralie District," said Amanda. "They all ride circuit most of the time. You'll find them scattered out at various homesteads, right now."

"I see," said Dow again. "Well, I think you better call them in as well, along with any other adult from the homesteads who's physically able to come."

"No," said Amanda.

He looked at her. His eyebrows raised.

"Courage, Amanda Morgan," he said, "is one thing. Stupidity, something else."

"And nonsense is nonsense wherever you find it," said Amanda. "I told you, you couldn't bully me —or anyone else you'll find in this town. And you'll need one of us who's here to deal with the people of the district for you. I can bring the youngsters back in if necessary, and with them such adults from the homesteads who don't need to stay where they are. If the medical people are free to come in, I can get them, too. But in return, I'll want some things from you."

"I don't think you're in a position to bargain."

"Of course I am," said Amanda. "Let's not play games. It's much easier for you if you can get civilian cooperation—it's much faster. Difficulty with the populace means expense, when you're carrying the cost of enough troops to nail down a planet—even as sparsely settled a planet as this one. And you yourself said once
you
get Cletus you'll be taking off without another thought for the rest of us."

"That's not exactly what I said," Dow replied.

Amanda snorted.

"All right," he said, "what was it you had in mind?"

"First, get your troops out of our town unless you were thinking of billeting them in our homes, here?"

"I think you saw camp being set up just beyond the houses a street or two over."

"All right," Amanda said. "Then I want them to stay out of town unless they've got actual business here.

When they do come in, they're to come in as visitors, remembering their manners. I don't want any of your officers, like that brigadier just now, trying to throw their weight around. Our people are to be free of any authority from yours, so we can get back to business as usual—and that includes putting the manufactory back into operation, immediately. I noticed you'd had the power shut off. Don't you realize we've got contracts to fill—contracts for manufactured items, so that we can trade with the rest of Dorsai for the fish, the grain and other things we have to have to live?"