Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 05 (3 page)

"I understand," said Amanda. "Do you know yet when Cletus will be back?"

"No. Any time—like Betta." Her voice thinned a little. "I'm never sure."

"No. Nor he, either, I suppose." Amanda watched the younger woman for a second. "I'll have Betta ready when you get here. Goodby."

"Goodby."

Amanda broke contact and set about getting Betta up and packed. This done, there was the house to be organized for a period of perhaps some days without inhabitants. Betta sat bundled in a chair in the kitchen, waiting, as Amanda finished programming the automatic controls of the house for the interval.

"You can call me from time to time at Foralie," Betta said.

"When possible," said Amanda.

She glanced over and saw the normally open, friendly face of her great-granddaughter, now looking puffy and pale above the red cardigan sweater enveloping her. Betta was more than capable in ordinary times; it was only in emergencies like this that she had a tendency to founder. Amanda checked her own critical frame of mind. It was not easy for Betta, about to have a child with her husband, father and brother all off-planet, in combat, and—the nature of war being what it was—the possibility existing that none of them might come back to her. There were only three men at the moment, left in the house of ap Morgan, and only two women; and now one of those two, Amanda, herself, was going off on a duty that could end in a hangman's rope or a firing squad. For she did not delude herself that the Earth-bred Alliance and Coalition military would fight with the same restraint toward civilians the soldiers of the younger worlds showed.

But it would not help to fuss over Betta now. It would help none of them—there was an approaching humming noise outside the house that crescendoed to a peak just beyond the kitchen door, and stopped.

"Melissa," said Betta.

"Come on," Amanda said.

She led the way outside. Betta followed, a little clumsily, and Melissa with Amanda helped her into the open cockpit of the ducted fan skimmer.

"I'll check up on you when I have time," Amanda said, kissing her great-granddaughter briefly. Betta's arms tightened fiercely around her.

"
Mandy
!" The diminutive of her name which only the young children normally used and the sudden desperate appeal in Betta's voice sent a surge of empathy arcing between them. Over Betta's shoulder, Amanda saw the face of Melissa, calm and waiting. Unlike Betta, Melissa came into her own in a crisis-it was in ordinary times that the daughter of Eachan Khan fumbled and lost her way.

"Never mind me," said Amanda, "I'll be all right. Take care of your own duties."

With strength, she freed herself and waved them off. For a second more she stood, watching their skimmer hum off down the slope. Betta's farewell had just woken a grimness in her that was still there.

Melissa and Betta. Either way, being a woman who was useful half the time was no good. Life required
you
to be operative at all hours and seasons.

That was the problem with a talisman-name like her own. She who would own it must be operative in just that way, at all times. "When someone of that capability should be born into the family, she could release the name of Amanda, which she had so far refused to every female child in the line. As she refused it to Betta for this child. And yet… and yet, it was not right to lock up the name forever. As each generation moved farther away from her own time, it and the happenings connected with it would then become more and more legendary, more and more unreal…

She put the matter for the thousandth time from her mind and turned back to buttoning up Fal Morgan.

Passing down the long hall, she let her fingers trail for a second on its dark wainscotting. Almost, she could feel a living warmth in the wood, the heart of the house beating. But there was nothing more she could do to protect it now. In the days to come, it, too, must take its chances.

Fifteen minutes later, she was on her own skimmer, headed downslope toward Foralie Town. At her back was an overnight bag, considerably smaller than the one they had packed for Betta. Under her belt was a heavy energy pistol on full charge and in perfect order. In the long-arm boot of the skimmer was an ancient blunderbus of a pellet shotgun, its clean and decent barrel replaced minutes before by one that was rusted and old, but workable. As she reached the foot of the slope and started the rise to the ridge, her gaze was filled by the mountains and Fal Morgan moved for the moment into the back of her mind.

The skimmer hummed upslope, only a few feet above the ground. Out from under the spruce and pine, the highland sun was brilliant. The thin earth cover, broken by outcroppings of granite and quartz was brown, sparsely covered by tough green grasses. The air was cold and light, yet unwarmed by the sun.

She felt it deep in her lungs when she breathed.
The wine of the morning
, her own mother had called air like this, nearly a century ago.

She mounted to the crest of the ridge and the mountains stood up around her on all sides, shoulder to shoulder like friendly giants, as she topped the ridge and headed down the further slope to Foralie, now visible, distant and small by the river bend, far below. The sky was brilliantly clear with the hew day.

Only a small, stray cloud, here and there, graced its perfection. The mountains stood, looking down.

There were people here who were put off by their bare rock, their remote and icy summits, but she herself found them honest—secure, strong and holding, brothers to her soul.

A deep feeling moved in her, even after all these years. Even more than for the home she had raised, she had found in herself a love for this world. She loved it as she loved her children, her children's children and her three husbands—each different, each unmatchable in its own way.

She had loved it, not more, but as much as she had loved her first-born, Jimmy, all the days of his life.

But why should she love the Dorsai so much? There had been mountains in Wales—fine mountains. But when she had first come here after her second husband's death, something about this land, this planet, had spoken to her and claimed her with a voice different from any she had ever heard before. She and it had strangely become joined, beyond separation. A strange, powerful, almost aching affection had come to bind her to it. Why should just a world, a place of ordinary water and land and wind and sky, be something to touch her so deeply?

But she was sliding swiftly now, down the gentler, longer curve of the slope that led to Foralie Town. She could see the brown track of the river road, now, following the snake of blue water that wound away to the east and out between a fold in the mountains, and in its other direction from the town, west and up until it disappeared in the rocky folds above, where its source lay in the water of permanent ice sheets at seventeen thousand feet. Small clumps of the native softwood trees moved and passed like shutters between her and sight of the town below as she descended. But at this hour she saw no other traffic about. Twenty minutes later, she came to the road and the river below the town, and turned left, upstream toward the buildings that were now close.

She passed out from behind a clump of small softwoods and slid past the town manufactory and the town dump, which now separated her from the river and the wharf that let river traffic unload directly to the manufactory. The manufactory itself was silent and inactive, at this early hour. The early sun winked on the rubble of refuse, broken metal and discarded material of all kinds, in the little hollow below the exhaust vent of the manufactory's power unit.

The Dorsai was a poor world in terms of arable land and most natural resources; but it did supply petroleum products from the drowned shorelines of the many islands that took the place of continents on the watery planet. So crude oil had been the fuel chosen for the power generator at the manufactory, which had been imported at great cost from Earth. The tools driven by that generator were as sophisticated as any found on Earth, while the dump was as primitive as any that pioneer towns had ever had. Like her Fal Morgan and the communications equipment within its wall.

She stopped the skimmer and got off, walking a dozen feet or so back into the brush across the road from the dump. She took the heavy energy handgun from her belt and hung it low on the branch of a sapling, where the green leaves all about would hide it from anyone not standing within arm's reach of it.

She made no further effort to protect it. The broad arrow stamped on its grip, mark of the ap Morgans, would identify it to anyone native to this world who might stumble across it.

She returned to the skimmer, just as a metal door in the side of the manufactory slid back with a rattle and a bang. Jhanis Bins came out, wheeling a dump carrier loaded with silvery drifts of fine metallic dust.

Amanda walked over to him as he wheeled the carrier to the dump and tilted its contents onto the rubble inches below the exhaust vent. He jerked the carrier back on to the roadway and winked at Amanda.

Age and illness had wasted him to a near skeleton, but there was still strength in his body, if little endurance. Above the old knife-scar laying all the way across his eyes held a sardonic humor.

"Nickel grindings?" asked Amanda, nodding at what Jhanis had just dumped.

"Right," he said. There was grim humor in his voice as well as his eyes. "You're up early."

"So are you," she said.

"Lots to be done." He offered a hand. "Amanda."

She took it.

"Jhanis."

He let go and grinned again.

"Well, back to work Luck Commander, ma'm."

He turned the carrier back toward the manufactory.

"News travels fast," she said.

"How else?" he replied, over his shoulder, and went inside. The metal door rolled on its tracks, slamming shut behind him.

Amanda remounted the skimmer and slide it on into town. As she came to a street of houses just off the main street, she saw Bhaktabahadur Rais, sweeping the path between the flowers in front of his house, holding the broom awkwardly but firmly in the clawed arthritic fingers of the one hand remaining to him.

The empty sleeve of the other arm was pinned up neatly just below the shoulder joint. The small brown man smiled warmly as the skimmer settled to the ground when Amanda stopped its motors opposite him.

He was no bigger than a twelve-year boy, but in spite of having almost as many years as Amanda, he moved as lightly as a child.

He carried the broom to the skimmer, leaned it against his shoulder and saluted. There was an impish sparkle about him.

"All right, Bhak," said Amanda. "I'm just doing what I'm asked. Did the young ones and their Ancients get out of town?"

He sobered.

"Piers sent them out two days ago," he said. "You didn't know?"

Amanda shook her head.

"I've been busy with Betta. Why two days ago?"

"Evidence they were out before we heard any Earth troops were coming." He shifted his broom back into his hand. "If nothing had happened it would have been easy to have called them back after a
few
days. If you need me for anything, Amanda—"

"I'll ask, don't worry," she said. It would be easier at any time for Bhak to fight, than wait. The kukri in its curved sheath still lay on his mantelpiece. "I've got to get on to the town hall."

She lifted the skimmer on the thrust of its fans. Their humming was loud in the quiet street.

"Where's Betta?" Bhak raised his voice.

"Foralie."

He smiled again.

"Good. Any news of Cletus?"

She shook her head and set the skimmer off down the street. Turning on to the main street, past the last house around the corner, she checked suddenly and went back A heavy-bodied girl with long brown hair and a round somewhat bunched-up face was sitting on her front step. Amanda stopped the skimmer, got out and went up to the steps. The girl looked up at her.

"Marte," said Amanda, "what are you doing here? Why didn't you go out with the other boys and girls?"

Marte's face took on a slightly sullen look

"I'm staying with grandma."

"But you wanted to go with one of the teams," said Amanda gently. "You told me so just last week"

Marte did not answer. She merely stared hard at the concrete of the walk between her feet. Amanda went up the steps past her and into the house.

"Berthe?" she called, as the door closed behind her.

"Amanda? I'm in the library." The voice that came back was deep enough to be male, but when Amanda followed it into a room off to her right, the old friend she found among the crowded bookshelves there, seated at a desk, writing on a sheet of paper, was a woman with even more years than herself

"Hello, Amanda," Berthe Haugsrud said. "I'm just writing some instructions."

"Marte's still here," Amanda said.

Berthe pushed back in her chair and sighed.

"It's her choice. She wants to stay. I can't bring myself to force her to go if she doesn't want to."

"What have you told her?" Amanda heard the tone of her voice, sharper than she had intended.

"Nothing." Berthe looked at her. "You can't hide things from her, Amanda. She's as sensitive as…

anyone. She picked it up—from the air, from the other young ones. Even if she doesn't understand details, she knows what's likely to happen."

"She's young," said Amanda. "What is she—not seventeen yet?"

"But she's got no one but me," said Berthe. Her eyes were black and direct under the wrinkled lids.

"Without me, she'd have nobody. Oh, I know everyone in town would look after her, as long as they could. But it wouldn't be the same. Here, in this house, with just the two of us, she can forget she's different. She can pretend she's just as bright as anyone. With that gone…"

They looked at each other for a moment.

"Well, it's your decision," said Amanda, turning away.

"And hers, Amanda. And hers."

"Yes. All right. Goodby, Berthe."

"Goodby, Amanda. Good luck"

"The same to you," said Amanda, soberly. "The same to you."