Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 05 (13 page)

"Reiko!" she said, and knelt clumsily beside the other woman.

"Stop Mene," Reiko barely whispered. She was bleeding heavily just above the belt of her jumper.

"Mene's out of her head."

"All right," said Amanda. "You lie quiet"

With an effort, she rose and went on. There was the next building before her. She opened the door and found Mene holding her energy rifle on yet another room of sick and dying soldiers. Mene's face was white and wiped clean of expression. Her eyes stared, fixed, and her finger quivered on the firing button of the weapon. The gaze of all the men in the room were on her face; and there was not even the sound of breathing.

"Mene," said Amanda, gently. Mene's gaze jerked around to focus on Amanda for a brief moment before returning to the soldiers.

"Mene…" said Amanda, softly. "It's almost over. Don't hurt anyone, now. It's just about over. Just hold them a while longer. That's all, just hold them."

Mene said nothing.

"Do you hear me?"

Mene nodded jerkily, keeping her eyes on the men before her.

"I'll be back soon," said Amanda.

She went out. The world was even more unreal about her and she felt as if she was walking on numb legs. But that was unimportant. Something large was wrong with the overall situation.

Something was very wrong. There were only two more huts shielding her from the vehicle park where the convoy had just unloaded. Those two buildings could not possibly hold all the rest of the original escort, plus the troops of the convoy. Nor should just those two huts be holding two or three of her adults. It did not matter what Arvid had told her. Something had gone astray—she could feel it like a cold weight hi her chest below the weakness and unreality brought on by her wound.

She tried to think with a dulled mind. She could gamble that Arvid and Bill's team had already subdued the house; and go back there now, without checking further, to get help… her mind cleared a little. A move like that would be the height of foolishness. Even if Arvid and Bill had men to spare to come back here with her, going for assistance would waste time when there might be no time to waste.

She took a good grip on her pellet gun, which was becoming an intolerable weight in her hands, and started around the curved wall of one of the huts.

Possibly the sense of unreality that held her was largely to blame—but it seemed to her that there was no warning at all. Suddenly she found herself in the midst of a tight phalanx of vehicles, the front ones already loaded with weaponed and alert-looking soldiers, and the rear ones with other such climbing into them.

But, if her appearance among them had seemed sudden to her, it had apparently seemed the same to them.

She was abruptly conscious that all movement around her had ceased. Soldiers were poised, half-in, half-out of their vehicles. Their eyes were on her.

Plainly, her fears had been justified. The apparent replacement of well soldiers by sick ones had been a trap; and these she faced now were about to move in for a counterattack She felt the last of her energy and will slipping away, took one step forward, and jammed the muzzle of her pellet shotgun against the side panel shielding the power unit in the closest vehicle.

"Get down," she said to the officers and men facing her.

They stared at her as if she was a ghost risen out of the ground before them.

"I'll blow every one of you up if I have to—and be glad to," she said. "Get out. Lie down, face down, all of you!"

For a second more they merely sat frozen, staring. Then understanding seemed to go through them in an invisible wave. They began to move out of their seats.

"Hurry…" said Amanda, for her strength was going fast. "On the ground…"

They obeyed. Dreamily, remotely, she saw them climbing from the vehicles and prostrating themselves on the ground.

Now
what do I do, Amanda thought? She had only a minute or two of strength left.

The answer came from the back of her head— the only answer.
Press the firing button of the pellet
gun, after all, and make sure no one gets away—

Unexpectedly, there was the sound of running feet behind her. She started to glance back over her shoulder; and found herself caught and upheld. She was surrounded by the field uniforms of four of the Dorsai staff members who had been with Arvid and Bill.

"Easy…" said the one holding her—almost carrying her, in fact. "We've got it. It's all over."

There succeeded a sort of blur, and then a large space of nothing at all. At last things cleared somewhat—but only somewhat—and she found herself lying under covers, in one of the Foralie bedrooms. Like someone in a high fever, she was conscious of people moving all around her at what seemed like ungracious speed, and talking words she could not quite catch. Her shoulder ached. Small bits and phrases of dialogue came clear from moment to moment.

"…
shai Dorsai
!"

What was that? That ridiculous phrase that the children had made up only a few years back, and which was now beginning to be picked up by their elders as a high compliment? It was supposed to mean

"real,
actual
Dorsai." Nonsense.

It occurred to her, as some minor statistic might, that she was dying; and she was vaguely annoyed with herself for not having realized this earlier. There were things she should think about, if that was the case.

If Betta had been in labor before the attack began, she might well have her child by now.

If so, it was important she tell Betta what she had decided just before they moved in on the troops, that the use of the Amanda name was her responsibility now, and the responsibility of succeeding generations…

"Well," said a voice just above her, and she looked up into the face of Ekram. He stank of sweat and anesthetic. "Coming out of it, are you?"

"How long…" it was incredibly hard to speak

"Oh, about two days," he answered with abominable cheerfulness.

She thought of her need to tell Betta of her decision.

"Betta…" she said. It was becoming a little easier to talk; but the effort was still massive. She had intended to ask specifically for news of Betta and the child.

"Betta's fine. She's got a baby boy, all parts in good working order. Three point seven three kilograms."

Boy! A
shock went through her.

Of course. But why shouldn't the child be a boy? No reason—except that, deluded by her own aging desires, she had fallen into the comfortable thought that it would not be anything but a girl.

A boy. That made the matter of names beside the point entirely.

For a moment, however, she teetered on the edge of self-pity. After all she had known, after all these years, why couldn't it have been a girl—under happier circumstances when she could have lived to know it, and find that it was a child who could safely take up her name?

She hauled herself back to common sense. What was all this foolishness about names, anyway? The Dorsai had won, had kept itself independent. That was her reward, as well as the reward to all of them

—not just the sentimental business of passing her name on to a descendent. But she should still tell Bet-ta of her earlier decision, if Ekram would only let them bring the girl to her. It would be just like the physician to decide that her dying might be hurried by such an effort, and refuse to let Betta come. She would have to make sure he understood this was not a decision for him to make. A deathbed wish was sacred and he must understand that was what this was…

"Ekram," she managed to say faintly. "I'm dying…"

"Not unless you want to," said Ekram.

She stared at him aghast. This was outrageous. This was too much. After all she had been through… then the import of his words trickled through the sense of unreality wrapping her.

"Bring Betta here! At once!" she said; and her voice was almost strong.

"Later," said Ekram.

"Then I'll have to go to her," she said, grimly.

She was only able to move one of her arms feebly sideways on top of the covers, in token of starting to get up from the bed. But it was enough.

"All right. All right!" said Ekram. "In just a minute."

She relaxed, feeling strangely luxurious. It was all right. The name of the game was survival, not how you did it. A boy! Almost she laughed. Well, that sort of thing happened, from time to time. In a few more years it could also happen that this boy could have a sister. It was worth waiting around to see. She would still have to die someday, of course—but in her own good time.

INTERLUDE

The voice of the third Amanda ceased. In the still mountain afternoon there were no other sounds
but •the hum of some nearby insects. A little breeze sprang up, and was gone again.

With her words still echoing in his mind, Hal thought of the struggle she had been speaking of,
that early Dorsai fight to stay free of Dow deCastries; and its likeness to the present fight on all
the worlds, to resist the loss of human freedom to the Other Men and Women—those cross-breeds
from human splinter cultures such as that on the Dorsai itself. This present fight in which he and
the third Amanda were both caught up.

"What happened inside Foralie?" he asked. "Inside the house, I mean, after Arvid Johnson and
Bill Athyer with their men went inside? What happened with Cletus and Dow—or were they just
able to take over with no trouble?"

"Something more than no trouble," she said. "Swahili was there, remember, and Swahili had been
a Dorsai. But Eachan Khan killed Swahili when Swahili let himself be distracted for a second and
Arvid and Bill were able to control the situation. Dow had a sleeve gun of his own, it turned out.

He hurt Cletus, but didn't manage to kill him. In the end it was Dow who was shipped back to
Earth as a prisoner."

"I see," said Hal. But his first question had immediately raised another one in his mind.

"How was that other business worked?" he asked. "That Coalition trick of having a contingent of
well soldiers up there at Foralie after they'd seemed to have been rotated down into the area of
town? Where did they come from, the soldiers Amanda found waiting, and ready to fight, in the vehicle park?"

"You remember the military physician had phoned Dow deCastries the night before," Hal's
Amanda said. "He was a political appointee himself and he knew General Amorine was another.

Besides Amorine was sick himself from the nickel carbonyl vapors. The military physician knew
that taking his suspicions to Amorine would simply have meant Amorine arresting Ekram and
trying to force some kind of answer out of him—and the military doctor was only too aware of
what it would be like for him to face alone a situation where everybody was dying. So, he went
directly to Dow, instead."

"
I don't understand what that would have to do with it
…"
Hal frowned
.

"Dow had been getting the reports from other areas. A thousand different things were going
wrong in a thousand different places with his occupation forces; and, next to Cletus, he had the
best mind on the planet." She paused to look at him. "Don't underestimate what Dow was."

"I didn't intend to."

"What he saw," Amanda said, "was that, for all practical purposes, his occupation of the Dorsai
had failed. But he could still, with some luck, grab Cletus and take him off-planet as a
prisoner—or at the worst, get away himself. This, if he had military control in this one district
alone."

"And he figured out that as soon as Cletus reached Foralie, Foralie would be attacked by the
local people in a try to rescue him?"

"Of course." Amanda shrugged. "It was obvious —as the first Amanda essentially said, to Ramon,
when Ramon wondered if Cletus hadn't really meant

what he said at the airpad—that they should do nothing against the soldiers. One way or another
the district had to attack, then. So he sent up the patrol that morning with only sick soldiers; and
it brought back well soldiers, all right; but those same well soldiers—only now pretending to be
sick—went back up as the troops in the convoy that escorted Cletus to Foralie."

"Ah," said Hal, nodding. "How long did the first Amanda actually live?"

"She lived to be a hundred and eight."

"And saw a second Amanda?"

Hal's Amanda shook her head.

"No. It was nearly a hundred years before there was a second Amanda," she said.

Hal smiled.

"Who had the wisdom to name the second one Amanda?"

"No one," Amanda said. "She was named Elaine; but by the time she was sir years old everyone
was already calling her the second Amanda. You might say, she named herself."

Once more, in the back of his mind, Hal felt an obscure alerting to attention of that part of him
which recognized the existence of The Purpose.

"Tell me something about the second Amanda," he said.

The third Amanda hesitated for a brief moment.

"For one thing," she said, "the second Amanda was the one both Kensie and Ian Graeme were in
love with."

"Kensie and Ian?" Hal felt a strange coldness move through him. "But Kensie never married and
Ian…"

"That's right," Amanda said. "Ion's wife, the mother of his children, was named Leah. But it was
the second Amanda who both the twins fell in love with in the first place."

"How did it happen?"

The third Amanda looked down toward Fal Morgan.

"The second Amanda grew up with Kensie and Ian," she said. "How could it be any other way
when the two households were practically side by side, here? She grew up with them; and by the
time they were nearly grown, if she loved either of them, it was probably Kensie, with that
brightness and warmth that was such a natural part of him."