Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 05 (9 page)

It was mid-afternoon when a runner caught up with her with a message that had been passed by phone from homestead to homestead for her, in the guise of neighborly gossip.

"Ekram's left the upcountry for town," she
was
told. The runner, a fourteen-year-old boy, looked at her with the steady blue eyes of the D'Aurois family.

"Why?" Amanda asked. "Did whoever passed the message say why?"

"He was at the Kiempü homestead, and he got a call from the military doctor," the boy said. "The other doctor's worried about identifying whatever's making people sick in town."

"That's all?"

"That's all Reiko Kiempü passed on, Amanda."

"Thank you," she said.

"—Except that she said the latest word is nothing's happened yet with Betta."

"Thanks," Amanda said.

She was a good hour of skimmer time from the Kiempü homestead, it was not far out of her way on her route to meet Lexy, Tim and Ramon once more above the meadow with the cantonment huts. She left her checking on the patrols and headed out.

When she got there, Reiko was outside, waiting, having heard Amanda was on the way. Amanda slid the skimmer to a stop and spoke eye to eye with the calm, tall, bronzed young woman, without getting out of the vehicle.

"The call went to Foralie first," Reiko told her, "but Ekram had already moved on. It finally caught up with him here, about two hours ago."

"Then you don't know what the military doctor told him?"

"No, all Ekram said was that he had to go down, that he couldn't leave it all to the other physician any longer."

Amanda looked at Maru Kiempü's daughter, bleakly.

"Three hours until dark," she said, "before I can get Lexy down to listen to what they're talking about in the cantonments."

"Eat something. Rest," said Reiko.

"I suppose so."

Amanda had never had less appetite or felt less like resting in her life. She could feel events building inexorably toward an explosion, as she had felt the long rollers of the Atlantic surf on the harsh seashores of her childhood, building to the one great wave that would drive spray clear to the high rocks on which she stood watching.

But it was common sense to eat and rest, with much of a long day behind her and possibly a long night ahead.

Just before sunset, she left the Kiempü homestead, and arrived at the meeting place with Lexy, Tim and Ramon before full dark. The clouds were thick and the air that wrapped about them was heavy with the dampness of the impending weather.

"Ekram still in town?" she asked.

"Yes," said Ramon. "We've got a cordon circling the whole area, outside the picket line the troops set up around the town. No one's gone out all day but patrols. If Ekram does, we'll get word as soon as he leaves."

"Good," said Amanda. "Lexy, Tim, be especially careful. A night like this their sentries could be in a mood to shoot first and check afterward. And the same thing applies to the soldiers in the cantonment area, itself"

"All right," said Lexy.

no

They went off Amanda did not offer to talk and Ramon did not intrude questions upon her. Now that she was at the scene of some actual action, she began to feel the fatigue of the day in spite of her rest up at Kiempii homestead, and she dozed lightly, sitting on her skimmer.

She roused at a touch on her arm.

"They're coming back," said Ramon's voice in her ear.

She sat up creakily and tried to blink the heavy obscurity out of her eyes. But it was almost solid around her. The only thing visible was the line of the ridge-crest, some thirty meters off; silhouetted against the lighter dark of the clouded sky. The clouds were low enough to reflect a faint glow from the lights of the town and the cantonment beyond the ridge.

"Amanda, we heard about Cletus—" It was Lexy's voice, right at her feet. She could see nothing of either youngster.

"What did you hear?"

"Well, not about Cletus, himself, exactly—" put in Tim.

"Practically, it was," said Lexy. "They've got word from one of their transport ships, in orbit. It picked up the signal of a ship phasing in, just outside our star system. They think it's Cletus, coming. If it is, they figure that in a couple more short phase shifts he ought to be in orbit here; and he ought to be down on the ground at Foralie by early afternoon tomorrow, at the latest."

"Did they say anything about their transport trying to arrest him in orbit?"

"No," said Lexy.

"Did you expect them to, Amanda?" Ramon ill asked.

"No," said Amanda. "He's coming of his own choice and it makes sense to let anything you want all the
way
into a trap before you close it. Once in orbit, his ship wouldn't be able to get away without being destroyed by theirs, anyway. But mainly, they want to be sure to get him alive for that full-dress trial back on Earth, so they can arrange to have the rest of us deported and scattered. So, I wouldn't expect they'll do anything until he's grounded. But there's always orders that get misunderstood, and commanders who jump the gun."

"Tomorrow afternoon," said Ramon musingly. "That's it, then."

"That's it," said Amanda, grimly. "Lexy, what else?"

"Lots of people in town are sick—" Lexy's voice was unaccustomedly hushed, as if it had finally come home to her what this situation was leading to, with people she had known all her life. "Both docs are working."

"How about the soldiers? Any of them sick?"

"Yes, lots," said Lexy. "Just this evening, a whole long line of them went on sick call."

Amanda turned in the direction of Ramon's flitter and spoke to the invisible Ancient.

"Ramon," she said, "how many hours was Ekram in town in the afternoon?"

"Not more than two."

"We've got to get him out of there…" But her tone of voice betrayed the fact that she was talking to herself, rather than to the other three, and no one answered.

"I want to know the minute he leaves," Amanda said. "If he isn't gone by morning… I'd better stay here tonight."

"If you want to move back beyond the next ridge, we can build you a shelter," Ramon said. "We can build it up over you and your skimmer and you can tap heat off the skimmer. That way you can be comfortable and maybe get some sleep."

Amanda nodded, then remembered they could not see her.

"Fine," she said

In the shelter, with the back of her driver's seat laid down and the other seat cushions arranged to make a bed, Amanda lay, thinking. Around her, a circle of cut and stripped saplings had been driven into the earth and bent together at their tops to make the frame. This sagged gently over her head under the weight of the leafy branches that interwove the saplings, the whole crowned and made waterproof by the groundsheet from the boot of the skimmer. In spite of the soft warmth filling the shelter from the skimmer, humming on minimum power to its heater unit, the slight weight of her old down jacket, spread over her shoulders, gave her comfort.

She felt a strange sadness and a loneliness. Present concerns slid off and were lost in personal memories.

She found herself thinking once more of Jimmy, her first-born—Betta's grandfather—whom she had loved more than any of her other children, though none of them had known it. Jimmy, whom she had cared for as child and adult through his own long life and all three of her own marriages, and brought at last with her here to the Dorsai to found a household. He was the Morgan from which all the ap Morgans since were named. He had lived sixty-four years, and ended up a good man and a good father—but all those years she had held the reins tight upon him.

Not his fault. As a six-month-old baby he had been taken—legally stolen from her by her in-laws, after his father's death, and the less than a short year and a half of their marriage. She had fought for four years after that, fought literally and legally, until finally she had worn her father and mother-in-law down to where they were forced to allow her visiting rights; and then she had stolen him back Stolen him, and fled off-Earth to the technologically-oriented new world of Newton; where she had married again, to give the boy a home and a father.

But when she had finally got him back, he had been damaged. Lying now, in this shelter in the Dorsai hills, she once more faced the fact that it might not have been her in-laws handling of him alone that had been to blame. It could also have been something genetic in their ancestry and her first husband's. But whatever it was, she had lost a healthy, happy baby, and regained a boy given to sudden near-psychotic outbursts of fury and ill judgment.

But she had encompassed him, guarded him, controlled him—keeping him always with her and bringing him through the years to a successful life and a quiet death. Only—at a great cost. For she had never been free in all that time to let him know how much she loved him. Her sternness, her unyielding authority, had made up the emotional control he had required, to supply the lack of it in himself. When he lay dying at last, in the large bedroom at Fal Morgan, she had been torn by the desire to let him know how she had always felt. But a knowledge of the selfishness of that desire had sustained her in silence. To put into plain words the role she had played for him all his life would have taken away what pride he had in the way he had lived, would have underlined the fact that without her he could never have stood alone.

So, she had let him go, playing her part to the last. At the very end he had tried to say something to her.

He had almost spoken; and a small corner of her mind clung to the thought that there, in the last moment, he had been about to say that he understood, that he had always understood, that he knew how she loved him.

Now, lying in the darkness of the shelter, Amanda came as close as she ever had in her existence to crying out against whatever ruled the universe. Why had life always called upon her to be its disciplinarian, its executioner, as it was doing now, once again? Cheek pressed against the tough, smooth-worn leather of the skimmer seat cushion, she heard the answer in her own mind—it had been because she would do the job and others would not.

She was too old for tears. She drifted off into sleep without feeling the tide that took her out, dry-eyed.

A rustle, the sound of the branches that completely enclosed her being pulled apart, brought her instantly awake. Gray daylight was leaking through the cover below the cap of the groundsheet, and there was the sound of a gust of rain pattering on the groundsheet itself.

"Amanda—" said Ramon, and crawled into the shelter. There was barely room for him to squat beside her skimmer. His face, under a rain-slick poncho hood, was on a level with hers.

She sat up.

"What time is it?"

"Nine hundred hours. It's been daylight for nearly three hours. Ekram's still in town. I thought you'd want to be wakened."

"Thanks."

"General Amorine—that brigadier in charge of the troops—has been phoning around the homesteads. He wants you to come in and talk to him."

"He can do without. Twelve hours," said Amanda. "How could I sleep twelve hours? Are the patrols out? How did the troops on them look?"

"A little sloppy in execution. Everybody hunched up—under rain gear of course. But they didn't look too happy, even aside from that. Some were coughing, the team members said."

"Any news from the homesteads—any news they've heard over the air, by phone from town?"

"Ekram and the military doc were up all night."

"We've got to get him out of there—" Amanda checked and corrected herself. "I've got to get him out of there. What's the weather for the rest of today?"

"Should clear by noon. Then cold, windy and bright."

"By the time Cletus is here we should have good visibility?"

"We should, Amanda."

"Good. Pass the word. I want those patrols observed all the time. Let me know if you can how many of the men on them become unusually sick or fall out. Also check with Cow's escort troops, at Foralie.

Chances are they're all in good shape, but it won't hurt to check The minute Cletus arrives, pass the word for the four other teams closest to Foralie to move in and join up with your team. Ring Foralie completely with the teams—what's that?"

Ramon had just put a thermos jug and a small metal box on the deck of her skimmer.

"Tea and some food," Ramon said. "Mene sent it down."

"I'm not an invalid."

"No, Amanda," said Ramon, backing out through the opening in the shelter on hands and knees. Outside, he pushed the branches back into place to seal the gap he had made entering. Left to herself, her mind busy, Amanda drank the hot tea and ate the equally hot stew and biscuits she found in the metal box Finished, she got up and donned her own poncho, dismantled the shelter and put the ground cloth back in the boot, the seat-back and cushions back in place. Outside, the wind was gusty and cold with occasional rain. She lifted her skimmer and slid it down to just behind the lower ridge, where the ponchoed figure of Ramon sat keeping a scope trained on the cantonments and town below.

"I've changed my mind about that commanding officer," Amanda told him. "I'm going in to talk to him-"

A gust of wind and rain made her duck her head.

"Amanda?" Ramon was frowning up at her. "What if he won't let you out again?"

"He'll let me out," Amanda said. "But whether I'm there or not, the teams are going to have to be ready to move against deCastries' escort and any troops they send up with Cletus, once Cletus gets to Foralie.

Just as they want Cletus for trial, we want Cletus safe, and we want deCastries, alive—not dead. If most of the rest of the districts can't break loose, we want something to bargain with. Cletus'll know how to use deCastries that way."

"If you're not available and it's time to attack them should we wait for Eachan to come out and take over?"

"If you think there's time—you and the other Ancients. If time looks tight, don't hesitate. Move on your own."

Ramon nodded.

"I'll look for you here when I come back," Amanda said; and lifted her skimmer, sending it off at a slant behind the cover of the ridge to approach the town from the opposite, down-river side.